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Death by political party: The relationship between COVID-19 deaths and political party affiliation in the United States.

ABSTRACT: This study explored social factors that are associated with the US deaths caused by COVID-19 after the declaration of economic reopening on May 1, 2020 by President Donald Trump. We seek to understand how county-level support for Trump interacted with social distancing policies to impact COVID-19 death rates. Overall, controlling for several potential confounders, counties with higher levels of Trump support do not necessarily experience greater mortality rates due to COVID-19. The predicted weekly death counts per county tended to increase over time with the implementation of several key health policies. However, the difference in COVID-19 outcomes between counties with low and high levels of Trump support grew after several weeks of the policy implementation as counties with higher levels of Trump support suffered relatively higher death rates. Counties with higher levels of Trump support exhibited lower percentages of mobile staying at home and higher percentages of people working part time or full time than otherwise comparable counties with lower levels of Trump support. The relative negative performance of Trump-supporting counties is robust after controlling for these measures of policy compliance. Counties with high percentages of older (aged 65 and above) persons tended to have greater death rates, as did more populous counties in general. This study indicates that policymakers should consider the risks inherent in controlling public health crises due to divisions in political ideology and confirms that vulnerable communities are at particularly high risk in public health crises.

SUBMITTER: Gao J

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8242603 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Project description:BackgroundAlthough the direct toll of COVID-19 in the United States has been substantial, concerns have also arisen about the indirect effects of the pandemic. Hospitalizations for acute cardiovascular conditions have declined, raising concern that patients may be avoiding hospitals because of fear of contracting severe acute respiratory syndrome- coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2). Other factors, including strain on health care systems, may also have had an indirect toll.ObjectivesThis investigation aimed to evaluate whether population-level deaths due to cardiovascular causes increased during the COVID-19 pandemic.MethodsThe authors conducted an observational cohort study using data from the National Center for Health Statistics to evaluate the rate of deaths due to cardiovascular causes after the onset of the pandemic in the United States, from March 18, 2020, to June 2, 2020, relative to the period immediately preceding the pandemic (January 1, 2020 to March 17, 2020). Changes in deaths were compared with the same periods in the previous year.ResultsThere were 397,042 cardiovascular deaths from January 1, 2020, to June 2, 2020. Deaths caused by ischemic heart disease increased nationally after the onset of the pandemic in 2020, compared with changes over the same period in 2019 (ratio of the relative change in deaths per 100,000 in 2020 vs. 2019: 1.11, 95% confidence interval: 1.04 to 1.18). An increase was also observed for deaths caused by hypertensive disease (1.17, 95% confidence interval: 1.09 to 1.26), but not for heart failure, cerebrovascular disease, or other diseases of the circulatory system. New York City experienced a large relative increase in deaths caused by ischemic heart disease (2.39, 95% confidence interval: 1.39 to 4.09) and hypertensive diseases (2.64, 95% confidence interval: 1.52 to 4.56) during the pandemic. More modest increases in deaths caused by these conditions occurred in the remainder of New York State, New Jersey, Michigan, and Illinois but not in Massachusetts or Louisiana.ConclusionsThere was an increase in deaths caused by ischemic heart disease and hypertensive diseases in some regions of the United States during the initial phase of the COVID-19 pandemic. These findings suggest that the pandemic may have had an indirect toll on patients with cardiovascular disease.

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Death by political party: The relationship between COVID-19 deaths and political party affiliation in the United States.

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