Sarah Palin's anti-vax talk shows Republicans have become a death cult

[Celerity]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/12/20/sarah-palin-anti-vax-tpusa-tconference/



Sarah Palin, rocket scientist, offered her thoughts on the coronavirus vaccine at a far-right conference in Arizona over the weekend. “It will be over my dead body that I’ll have to get a shot,” she proclaimed. Unlikely, governor. Phase III trials have shown that the vaccines fail to generate a robust immune response when administered to dead people. But Palin’s talk of dead bodies is on point. By discouraging vaccination, she and Tucker Carlson and the rest of the anti-science right are quite literally getting people killed. Studies show that those living in the most pro-Trump counties in the United States are dying from covid-19 at a rate more than five times higher than in the most anti-Trump counties.

Palin’s pronouncements should come with a surgeon-general-style caution: “WARNING: SIGNIFICANTLY INCREASES YOUR RISK OF DYING FROM COVID.” The Fox News crowd bristles at the notion that the Trumpified Republican Party has taken on aspects of a cult. But it’s looking more and more like a death cult, as my friend Sidney Blumenthal puts it. Nine hundred members of the Peoples Temple died at Jonestown. Thirty-nine died in the Heaven’s Gate mass suicide. But tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of Republicans are dying unnecessarily from covid-19 because they refuse to get vaccinated.

Blogger Charles Gaba, who has been tracking coronavirus death rates by county, reported Monday that since June 30, there have been about 117 deaths per 100,000 people in the reddest 10 percent of the United States (as measured by counties’ vote share for Donald Trump in 2020) — nearly six times the death rate of about 21 per 100,000 in the bluest decile. Likewise, the 100 million people who live in the most pro-Trump 30 percent of the United States had a death rate of about 98 per 100,000 since June 30 — more than triple the 30 per 100,000 among the people who live in the least pro-Trump 30 percent.

In the early days of the pandemic, those in urban areas — Democratic strongholds — were disproportionately likely to die from covid-19. That leveled out in January of this year. Then, the vaccines became available, and the delta variant struck. In August, there were more than 7 deaths per 100,000 in the reddest counties for every 1 death per 100,000 in the bluest. This month, Gaba projects there will be 5.62 deaths per 100,000 in the Trumpiest 10 percent for every 1 death per 100,000 in the least-Trumpy decile of America. (Gaba’s data is consistent with other recent studies.)

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