Deadly Politics
By 
You want to politicize vaccines, you will die for your whiteness:
As the coronavirus pandemic approaches its third full winter, two studies reveal an uncomfortable truth: The toxicity of partisan politics is fueling an overall increase in mortality rates for working-age Americans.
In one study, researchers concluded that people living in more conservative parts of the United States disproportionately bore the burden of illness and death linked to covid-19. The other, which looked at health outcomes more broadly,found that the more conservative a state’s policies, the shorter the lives of working-age people.
The reasons are many, but, increasingly, it is state — and not just federal — policies that have begun to shape the economic, family, environmental and behavioral circumstances that affect people’s well-being. Some states have expanded their social safety nets, raising minimum wages and offering earned income tax credits while using excise taxes to discourage behaviors — such as smoking — that have deleterious health consequences. Other states have moved in the opposite direction.
Researchers say the result of this growing polarization is clear: The nation’s overall health profile is going from bad to worse. Americans can expect to live as long as they did in 1996 — 76.1 years, with life spans truncated by higher rates of chronic illnesses, deaths in childbirth and covid.
“I’m not doing this research to be partisan, simplistically supporting one party or another,” said Nancy Krieger, a social epidemiologist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and a co-author on one of the two studies. “This is about looking at the behavior of different actors, some of whom have a lot more power than others to set standards, make demands and allocate resources.”
Krieger said it is fair for people to ask their elected officials, “Are you doing what you should to protect our health?”
Oh now, Florida voters absolutely asked that of Ron DeSantis and they all agreed that, yep!, death was preferable to vaccination so better reelect our Cato of The Villages! Alas, such demographic choices about basic health from vaccines to gun control seem to make no electoral difference.