The Intersection of Politics and Healthcare
The graphs below (from The New York Times) show some of the most arresting data I have yet seen during the Covid era. The graph on the right displays Covid mortality statistics in US counties over time, broken down by the percentage of population that voted for Trump in 2020. The bottom curve shows that in counties where less than 30% of the population voted for Trump the Covid mortality rate thru January of 2024 was about 200 per 100,000 people. In counties where over 70% voted for Trump, the death rate was about 450 per 100,000–two and a half times the rate in the counties with the least morality. The divergence has grown over time and continues to do so. The mortality rates increase the higher the percentage of Trump voters.
“Red” states, which have the highest percentage of Trump voters, have a much lower vaccination rate for Covid, with a strong correlation between mortality and non-vaccinated status.
| Test refers to the graph on the right. |  |
Out-of-Date Drugs
On October 22, 2023, I posted a blog about out-of-date drugs. The bottom line was that almost all drugs (except vaccinations, creams, ointments) retained potency far longer than expiration dates listed on their containers.
A recent study in the Journal of the American Medical Association supports the conclusion. A research trial that compared the use of “out-of-date” beta blockers (standard-of-care drugs in the treatment of patients who have suffered a heart attack) with those who had “current” beta blockers. There was no difference in mortality between the groups, nor in any of the other common measures used in assessing treatments (e.g., length of hospital stays, time missed from work, incidence of heart failure, etc.) of heart attack victims. Follow-up for patients in the study averaged three and half years.
New Cancer Stats
There were about two million cases of cancer diagnosed in the US in 2021, an increase compared to previous years. The increase was almost entirely due to an aging population, in which cancer rates are historically higher than in younger populations.
Nevertheless, cancer mortality rates declined. The decrease was due to: less smoking of cigarettes; early detection of many cancers; and improved therapy.
Always good reading— thanks for pulling these articles together.
It’s a mystery to me why this information is not obvious and accepted by the RFK Jrs. of the world. They don’t like to be told what to do, certainly, but I think of people with an innate inability to read maps; people like RFK Jr have an innate inability to grasp rudimentary statistical reasoning and therefore these graphs are a foreign language to them. They don’t understand your point, and, coupled with an unwillingness to be told what to do, they resist.
Jim, thank you for distilling this important information into an easily understood, easy-to-recall format.