![]() It is really what's referred to as interpersonal trust - the trust we have in one another, how we feel about each other. In fact, most global studies also don't show that. PARKS: And what about trust? I mean, the former president also was criticized a lot early in the pandemic for his role in politicizing some of America's public health institutions.īOLLYKY: So some of the most fascinating results in this study are around trust because your expectation might be what really drove differences in this pandemic are the trust we have in government or the trust we have in science. But you do see this strong association with the degree to which states went for the former president in the 2020 election. In our top 10, half of the states in that top 10 are Republican-led states. You don't see any affiliation between the party affiliation of the - a state governor and its COVID death rates. Can you break that down a little bit more? How did you see this connection between people who voted in 2020 for former President Trump and how that played out in the COVID results?īOLLYKY: Well, it's important to acknowledge, first, that this is about politics, not party. So there is a clear political angle here. And you see that really, in particular, in states with a large population that identifies as Black Americans in the last census and states that went very strongly for the former president, the Republican candidate, in 2020. One, I'm sorry to report, is a very American set of factors, which is a toxic combination of racial disparities and politics - high levels of poverty, low levels of education and low access to quality health care. And what we found are there are several reasons why states struggled in this pandemic. And that's not tied to any biological factors. And even when you do that apples-to-apples comparison, you have that fourfold spread. So we look at the differences in the age of a state population - think Florida - or high levels or high rates of preexisting health conditions. We control for all the obvious relevant biological factors in this comparison. So was there any rhyme or reason as to why individual states were hit harder than others? My initial thought goes to vaccination rates, but tell me what you learned.īOLLYKY: So it is remarkable, to begin with, just the difference between states. He co-authored the study and directs the Global Health Program at the Council on Foreign Relations. Researchers looked into why, and they hope the answers might inform future public health decisions. The places hit hardest - Arizona and Washington, D.C., where death rates were roughly four times higher. But according to a new study just published in the medical journal The Lancet, they had the lowest standardized death rates from COVID-19 in the U.S. So Hawaii and New Hampshire - two states that don't have much in common.
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