Thursday, March 10, 2022

Masks v. vaccines

 The number of Covid cases, according to the latest information, is as high in counties that went heavily for Biden as in those counties that voted for Trump.  That may be due to a number of factors; Biden counties tend to be more urban with more contact, and people in Biden counties get tested more.  The other lesson has been that the Omicron variant was so contagious that people were more likely to get it, mask or no mask.

Where the significant difference showed up was in Covid deaths per 100,000 people.  Over the past three months the death rate in counties that Trump won in a landslide have been more than twice as high as the rate in counties that Joe Biden won in a landslide.

The lesson is–get vaccinated.  Fortunately readers of this blog post already knew that.

Graphs of the death rates in selected states and counties can be found on page A22 of today’s New York Times.  

2 comments: