Prognosis
Pandemic Rift Seen Widening Mortality Gap Between Republicans and Democrats
- Premature death rates worsening in Republican counties
- Covid pandemic could exacerbate health gap, study says
A Covid-19 patient on the Intensive Care Unit floor of a hospital in Connecticut, US.
Photographer: Allison Dinner/BloombergThis article is for subscribers only.
Republican-leaning counties in the US experienced higher rates of premature death even before the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, a study found, and researchers fear politically polarized responses to the virus could widen the gap.
Democratic-voting counties had an overall 15% lower death rate than Republican counties in 2019, up from a 3% difference in 2001, researchers at Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston said Tuesday in a study. The research in the BMJ medical journal compared mortality data from US counties based on how they voted in historical presidential and gubernatorial elections.