Pfizer, the first to produce an effective and approved vaccine, didn’t receive any funding from Operation Warp Speed for its development, clinical trial, or manufacture, but why do Trump's worshippers boo the Loser now when he pushes vaccination?
His "Big Lie" being exposed in Arizona notwithstanding, why do diehard Trumpers defy his advocacy and that of other Republican politicians such as Jim Justice in West Virginia?
West Virginia is one of the most Republican states in the country. Trump won the state by nearly 40 points in 2020.
West Virginia ranks last in the country for the percentage of the adult population that is fully vaccinated. Just 48% of adults are fully vaccinated, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This makes West Virginia the only state in the country where less than half the adult population is fully vaccinated.
Education rates have been highly correlated with vaccination rates. Indeed, the states in the top 25 for college-educated adults have on average about 10 points more of their adult population vaccinated compared to the states in the bottom 25 for college-educated adults.
West Virginia has fewer adults with a college degree than any state in the nation, and the lowest percentage of adults vaccinated.
Republican Governor Jim Justice's pleas with West Virginians to get vaccinated have been overwhelmed by the demographic and political fundamentals that have plagued the vaccination effort throughout the country.
West Virginia is the worst in the country in current hospitalizations.
West Virginia also has the third most deaths over the last week controlling for population size. The two states with a higher death rate (Alabama and Florida) are in the top half for new vaccinations.
The political divide over vaccinations is so large that almost every reliably blue state now has a higher vaccination rate than almost every reliably red state.
Because the vaccines are so effective at preventing serious illness, Covid deaths are also showing a partisan pattern. Covid is still a national crisis, but the worst forms of it are increasingly concentrated in red America.
Some left-leaning communities — like many suburbs of New York, San Francisco and Washington, as well as much of New England — have such high vaccination rates that even the unvaccinated are partly protected by the low number of cases. Conservative communities, on the other hand, have been walloped by the highly contagious Delta variant.
Since Delta began circulating widely in the U.S., Covid has exacted a horrific death toll on red America: In counties where Donald Trump received at least 70 percent of the vote, the virus has killed about 47 out of every 100,000 people since the end of June, according to Charles Gaba, a health care analyst. In counties where Trump won less than 32 percent of the vote, the number is about 10 out of 100,000.
And the gap will probably keep growing...
