In the
two years since COVID began its attempt to dominate human activities across the
globe, we have witnessed an ever-widening range of how humans and their
societies react. This is especially notable in the US where COVID was not just
a national healthcare crisis but also became one of the most inane and destructive
of phenomena, a divisive political issue. As is almost always the case, the emergence
of politics on an issue produces the host of symptoms, side-effects, and ailments
that any infectious disease injects into a population.
Now while
it is important to recognize that the nation has suffered much during the COVID
plague and all evidence to date is that the harms done will continue for some
time yet, there are lessons to be learned from the information being acquired
and the knowledge that can be gained. This doesn’t diminish the pain, suffering
and losses that many people and families have experienced and which the nation and
our citizens should compassionately acknowledge. Just as the nation owes a great
deal of gratitude to first-responders and healthcare workers, including the ‘essential’
workers who helped keep critical aspects of the economy going. These and many
other responses to COVID’s ravages throughout the nation are outstanding
examples of how a society and its members can collectively join together and
demonstrate what it means to be an America of all its people.
Of
course, then there are the politics and the politicians. For reasons passing
all understanding, reasoning and sanity, COVID inflamed a fevered political
contest over an unending list of issues that have weakened Americans’ resolve to
end the plague and further divide people even more than ever. As foolish and counter-productive
as these self-inflicted wounds have been, we must hope that despite our
politics, political leaders, and political parties that the information,
lessons and knowledge that can be gained is not lost, ignored or go unexamined.
To learn
the valuable insights which are to be found amid the data and self-identified
population sub-groups it is critical to acquire and preserve the data, to
assess and analyze the data, and to provide comprehendible summaries and
conclusions that the data reveals.
What
are some of the insights that we have ample evidence on already? Well, we
already know that the following issues have shown some distinctive divides:
· Wearing a mask
· Social-distancing
· Remote learning for schools
· Lock-downs
· Vaccines
· Vaccination mandates
· Various forms of treatments for COVID
· Economic relief packages
· Ethnic, racial and other societal groupings like: age, sex, education, …
The insights that are available on these different topics of
course come from different areas of expertise, or on some fronts from areas of
non-expertise. Given how constantly many of these issues have been and continue
to be covered in the news media and on social-media, there should be very few
people who are not aware of the different views that surrounding each issue. What
is learned on most of these issues will come from various entities, especially
healthcare topic, that will present how aspects of COVID infections and
outcomes varied by groups taking one side or another. Preventing and lessening
the consequences of COVID has been shown for mask-wearing, social-distancing,
vaccines & vaccinations, differential efficacies or inefficacies for given
treatments, and on lock-downs or re-openings. This is all useful information
and should enable STEM-oriented entities to use these learning to be more
prepared and capable in dealing with COVID going forward and for other such epidemic/pandemic
events in the future.
But those lessons are not the only things which we can
learn; nor are they necessarily the more salient knowledge to be gained from
our collective COVID experiences. What about factors/variables which logically should
not be expected to show differential impacts and outcomes because of COVID?
What about the irrational forces at play in this viral quagmire of infections, hospitalizations,
and deaths? Yes, I am referring to politics.
But how would one demonstrate that politics has a meaningful
and significant effect on COVID? Yes, we all hear politicians arguing over
national policies. We see political leaders at all levels fighting over what
they are going to do or not do, will permit or not permit, and claim is being
done based upon the “science” and/or the data with or without providing where
they got the ‘science’ or what the data is. But who in their right mind to trust
politicians? There are even opportunities to see how some variable as mundane
and inane as public school-boards’ policies.
How about we take a more STEM-oriented strategy and look at
the data in ways that are not often if ever considered. Pick factors/variables
which a priori don’t have any rational reason to be relevant to how COVID
impact and outcome occur. Since politicians have taken up-front, in your face positions
on various public policies doesn’t it make sense to use a political factor to
assess the data? I am sure that you have heard someone from a news entity state
that “COVID doesn’t care about your political alignment.” I am absolutely
confident that that statement is true; but that doesn’t mean that politicians doesn’t
have an impact on COVID.
What then does the data tell us about the latter “cause and
effect” relationship? It tells a rather strange story. Take the publicly
published data on COVID infections and deaths and hypothesize what you would
expect to see if political affiliation has no causal relationship to COVID
results. For COVID infections would there be roughly no difference in infection
rates? Isn’t the same to be expected in COVID deaths? If these expectations are
what you get than politics is unrelated to COVID just as COVID is unrelated to
politics.
Let’s use the political alignment of each state’s
legislature (which one controls the legislature) as a variable [Note: We could use
the political party of each state’s governor as another variable.] Does that
Legislative Party make any difference in COVID outcomes?
It does!
Ok, but how much does it matter? Well, with 60% of the
states having Republican dominated legislatures what would indicate a
difference of note? How about 22 or the worst 23 performing states in terms of infection
cases are Republican. Of the 17 best performing states, 15 are Democratic legislatures,
with 1 being a split legislature, and 1 being Republican. The random chance of
this occurring is astronomically unlikely. If we examine the data once vaccines
were available and promoted there is a slight improvement, but the unbalanced
pattern persists [Jan. 1, 2021 was used as the start date.]. Of the worst 23
states, 3 are Democrats. Of the best performing 17 states, 4 are Republican and
1 is split. What about COVID deaths, does the legislative party matter there?
It does.
In looking at COVID deaths from the beginning, the worst 23
performing states had 6 were Democratic legislators, and of the best performing
17 states 4 were Republican and 3 were split evenly. Well these results are not
as unlikely as the Infections, they are still not very probable. When a vaccine
available analysis is examined, the results shift back to the very improbable
results. Of the 23 worst performing states, 2 are Democrat legislatures and the
rest are all Republican; and for the best 17 performing states, 4 are
Republican, 3 are split and 10 are Democrats.
Now these results have to be telling us something relevant; and
of course, the question is what? It’s not like there are only Republicans in
Republican dominated states or Democrats in Democratic states, so there have to
be factors which are more directly ‘causal’. The virus after all, really does
not care or act differently because of your political alignment or the
politically dominating legislative party. This leaves us with more to learn. Perhaps
the secret ingredients reside in some of those divisive issues mentioned
earlier.
But there is another insight that would seem obvious. It
relates to whom is and who isn’t vaccinated. It is not a question of what the right
choice is, but given the statistics on the differential outcomes for each choice,
what can one predict? If unvaccinated folk are 5 times more likely to get COVID
compared to vaccinated and the unvaccinated are over 10 times more likely to die
than the vaccinated are. If you take the relationship of state legislatures and
COVID and factor in these differential outcomes then one should expect that
more Republican voters will die from COVID than Democratic voters. This seem to
be a potential consequence for the Republican party that calls into question
the wisdom of motivating their supporters to ‘resist’ vaccinations.
It will be interesting to see if the data continues to disadvantage one
political party more than the other.
I suppose that the notion of the “wisdom of the crowd” has its limits.
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