Why are reporters hyping a deeply flawed study supposedly proving Covid killed more Republicans because they had lower jab rates?

The paper says what media outlets want to hear about Covid, the vaccines, and the GOP. So they're ignoring a huge hole in it that essentially destroys its findings.

Last week, three Yale researchers reported Republicans had higher death rates from Covid* [SEE NOTE AT END] than Democrats after mRNA vaccines became available to everyone.

The highest gap in death rates occurred in counties with low vaccination levels, suggesting differences in jab rates caused it, the study said.

Media outlets quickly broadcast the findings, which ran in the peer-reviewed Journal of the American Medical Association. “Republican deaths in Florida, Ohio linked to COVID vaccine politics,” Axios wrote. On Twitter, Chris Hayes of MSNBC claimed the study showed that “a bunch of people with big platforms [tried] to get their audiences killed.”

The paper actually was first published in non-peer-reviewed form in September 2022 - and got hefty media attention then too. News outlets do not usually report on research that’s 10 months old and already received attention, but they made an exception this time.

No surprise, as the research backs up the many, many, many stories in summer 2021 about unvaccinated middle-aged (or even younger) Republicans clogging emergency rooms and dying of Covid.

To its credit, the paper is elegantly designed and makes interesting arguments.

Just one problem. A crucial detail in its findings essentially blows up the results. The authors do not exactly hide the problematic result, but they do brush over it. Only a close reading of the paper makes it clear.

The detail suggests that the apparent connection between party affiliation and death may result from hidden epidemiological factors. At the least, it undoes any effort to suggest that young or middle-aged Republicans suffered from being unvaccinated.

(What’s the crucial detail? To find out, wait 72 hours - or subscribe now. I suggest subscribing now. This one’s good.)

To conduct the study, the researchers matched death records with party registrations or voting records in Florida and Ohio.

They looked at deaths during Covid before and after May 1, 2021, when vaccines were widely available to anyone who wanted them.

Before then, Republicans and Democrats in the two states died at roughly equal rates, they found. But afterwards, Republicans died significantly more frequently in Ohio (though the gap was much smaller in Florida, a puzzling finding though not the truly problematic issue).

As the authors concluded:

An association was observed between political party affiliation and excess deaths in Ohio and Florida after COVID-19 vaccines were available to all adults. These findings suggest that differences in vaccination attitudes and reported uptake between Republican and Democratic voters may have been factors in the severity and trajectory of the pandemic in the US.

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All reasonable enough. The paper clearly presents its results, the authors throw in caveats, the data seem solid.

Except, halfway through the “Results” section, are these stunning sentences:

The analyses stratified by age showed that Republican voters had significantly higher excess death rates compared with Democratic voters for 2 of the 4 age groups in the study, the differences for the age group 25 to 64 years were not significant. Democratic voters had significantly higher excess death rates compared with Republican voters for the age group 65 to 74 years. [Emphasis added.]

Yes, you read that right.

The extra Republican deaths only occurred in people over 75.

For those under 75, the authors actually found Republicans were less likely to die than Democrats. And the largest party gap of all - the gap that drove most of the overall study’s finding - came from the most elderly people, those 85 and over.

The authors say nothing more about this finding (which they did not disclose in the original preprint last year, suggesting at least one peer reviewer noted its absence).

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(If old old Republicans died, how come young old Republicans didn’t?)

SOURCE

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To say the least, this finding throws the overall study results into question. If the vaccine was protecting the Democrats who got it but the Republicans who did not, why were younger Republicans not at high risk too?

This question is especially pertinent since people over 85 are less likely to have significant choice in whether they are vaccinated or to refuse the vaccine for political reasons. The gap by party affiliation should have been larger, not smaller, in younger people.

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Deep in the paper’s appendix is another puzzling finding.

The graph below shows excess deaths by party affiliation in Ohio - the state which did have a gap. Look closely, and you will see that the difference really only becomes notable in August 2021, and then continues to widen through the winter.

But the original two-shot regimen had its peak effectiveness for the elderly people who received it first from January through July - when there is no notable difference in deaths by party.

To the extent there is a gap, it appears to be related to a reduced willingness of some very elderly Republicans to receive mRNA boosters in the fall of 2021.

The timing is striking, because it comes after the Biden Administration began to directly attack younger Republicans and conservatives for refusing any vaccine and impose mandates that mostly affected working-age people.

In other words, by demonizing younger Republicans who did NOT need the Covid jab at all, the Biden Administration may have discouraged more elderly Republicans who might (temporarily) have benefited from a third shot.

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(Timing isn’t everything, it’s the only thing)

(SOURCE - eFigure 3)

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You won’t find either of these facts in the stories written about the paper.

Their absences is part of a broader pattern.

In 2021, reporters pretended the deaths of unvaccinated people were overwhelmingly occurring in non-elderly adults who had chosen not to be vaccinated for political reasons. They jumped on this study because its headline seemed to support that conclusion.

But the picture they painted was never correct.

Yes, some younger unvaccinated people - usually with severe comorbidities including morbid obesity - did die of Covid.

But the extremely elderly were at by far the greatest risk both before and after the vaccines came out, as even The New York Times has acknowledged. And we now have growing evidence of astounding levels of “healthy vaccinee bias.”

In other words, many (if not most) unvaccinated people who died did not refuse the vaccine for political or any other reason. They were simply too old and sick to receive it.

This paper does nothing to refute that conclusion.

In fact the work arguably supports it.

But don’t expect NPR or anyone else in the media to say so.