this post was submitted on 10 Sep 2023
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Texas had the 3rd highest mortality rate, and Florida the 18th. Expected death rates should be relative to population density. Florida is 13th and Texas is 13th. Both states are dramatically over-represented per capita in US COVID deaths. Your numbers defend my side.
NY has the 7th highest population density and is past the middle of the pack in terms of deaths. California has the 11th highest population density and was middle of the pack.
The highest death states (other than the one you tried to use for your argument) were Oklahoma and Alabama. Both fairly low in population density. Care to read off the other high-death-toll states? West Virginia, Mississippi, Wyoming, Tennessee, Nevada, Arizona...
In fact, I'll take a step further. In swing states (like Florida), the death rate of Republicans was comfortably higher than of Democrats. It led to conspiracy theories that we were secretly creating and spreading the disease, not the fact that they had literal fucking parties to spread it on purpose.
The reason we needed it for a global response is that if you didn't do it, it spread to everyone and killed them. Vaccination and prevention only works when universally embraced and/or mandated. Both parties were in full agreement about that until the moment Trump started telling people to drink lysol and bleach instead (and there was a huge uptick in that!). Did you drink lysol at his suggestion?
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1103688/coronavirus-covid19-deaths-us-by-state/#:~:text=There%20have%20been%20101%2C159%20deaths,number%20of%20COVID-19%20cases.
Some of what you said was partially correct, but most of it was not.
This is just part of the narrative that gets pushed around the pandemic, I doubt its actually true. Even if it is, what your comparing here is those extremely stupid few who did take it too far, as another user has mentioned, throwing "spread covid" parties and things like that, which have no real bearing in terms of how the virus normally spreads. Things like that wouldn't even be an issue if the pandemic hadn't been politicized in the first place.
As far as Trump telling people to drink bleach, that was actually a misunderstanding between Trump and some doctor he was talking to. I believe it was Dr. McCullough that told that story on the rogan podcast. More the product of Trump's inability to communicate effectively. And for your claim that people took that advice, I again doubt how true that is, but even so you'd be talking about a small minority of republicans who were stupid enough to try it who are not representative of conservatives as a whole. In case you were unaware, there are extremely stupid people all over the political compass