What Are Odds COVID-19 Is Political?

You’ve surely heard many people say that the COVID-19 virus does not care about politics, political parties or anything when it comes to infecting its next victim (aka host). From a STEM perspective, this is what any moderately informed person would know and agree with. This is not to say that there are not differences in terms of how the virus might affect the host. This is also by now a generally known characteristic of the COVID virus. It has higher risks for different age groups and different health conditions; but not because the virus chooses to act differently a priori but because once transmitted to the next host the virus operates based on the conditions pre-existing in the host. So, based on the basic viral transmission processes that COVID uses in its transmissions, none of them are targeted at humans because they are Democrats, Republicans, or any other political belief-system.

This political neutrality of the virus offers an unusual opportunity to learn and understand how capable our politics, political parties and political leaders are at effectively or ineffectively managing a non-partisan virus and national crisis in their respective jurisdictions. One could pose a simple scientific question and in a very STEM-based manner test the question. Now there are many possible questions so it may be prudent to select a rather simple one. Given the non-partisan orientation of the virus that factor presents an obvious direction to probe. If the virus does not operate differently because of political position, then how does one’s politics affect the results produced by the virus? That is an interesting question. How could it be tested? Perhaps the following question will suffice:

If we looked at each state as an independent test-bed case, then we could make predictions based upon the non-partisan virus. For instance, what are the chances that the performance of states’ infection levels would be random with respect to the political party controlling their state’s legislatures? This can be a hard analysis to make. Unless the results are so statistically compelling that one is left with a need to ask: “What the hell!?”

If we looked at an ordered ranking of states from worst performing to best performing than a random non-partisan virus would create a sequence that is within the realm of statistical probability. For instance, if you flipped a coin (an analog for a state) than what is the probability of seeing the sequence that we see? So, let’s look at the worst 20 performing states.

Here’s what we see. The worst state has a Republican dominated legislature. That’s a 50-50 coin flip. No big whoop.

The 2^nd state also has a Republican dominated legislature and the 3^rd state has a Democratic dominated legislature. There’s a 39% change of that. So, no surprise here either.

Now things get interesting. The next 17 states are all Republican dominated legislatures. So, of the worst 20 states: 19 are Republican legislatures and only 1 is Democratic. Do your coin flips and there are some chances of that happening. Not many but some. The odds of that occurring in a population of 51 states (District of Columbia is included as a state) are around 26 times in a trillion tries at flipping that coin. This is like winning the Powerball lottery about 130 times. Not at all likely, and as such a big whoop there must be some contributary cause due in some degree to this rather bizarre finding.

The virus did not react differently because of any state’s legislature. But this does not preclude that actions taken or not taken because of a state’s legislature didn’t cause differences in how the virus’ transmission processes were impacted. For example, a legislature may require or deny a governor the authority to implement a particular public policy. The state’s legislature in reflecting the political demographics of a state may reflect the attitudes and actions of its citizens in complying or not with public policies implemented in response to the virus. In essence a state’s legislature may be a direct factor or a proxy-factor for causal agents that impact the efficacy of policies and actions used or not used in how the state performs in protecting its citizenry.

Clearly there are things that could be learned here. For example, the public could learn that when politicians get involved in issues that these politicians/political parties do not understand, and there are a lot of things that politicians do not understand, they may turn a non-political issue into a political issue. When this happens, the public is placing itself at risk and placing the nation at risk if they just go along with what the politicians and the political party you align with are telling you. One of them may be right. But you cannot even take comfort that one side has to be right; both could be wrong. And, thinking that at least your side is ‘less wrong’ is just another version of the same risk (I did not want to say stupidity).

What might be worth learning is that you must constantly question your politicians and political party. I have assumed that you are already questioning the other party and its politicians. Do not trust you own party, its politicians, or the issues that they are harping to you about. Your patriotic duty and civic responsibility is to doubt those you are trusting to represent you. Consider the political party as just one side of a coin. If you flip that coin on every issue and problem, what do you think the chances are that your party or politicians will be right every time?