States with Republican governors had highest Covid incidence and death rates, study finds

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2021-03/jhub-sb031021.php

 

News Release 10-Mar-2021
Starting in early summer last year, analysis finds that states with Republican governors had higher case and death rates
Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health

 

The per-capita rates of new COVID-19 cases and COVID-19 deaths were higher in states with Democrat governors in the first months of the pandemic last year, but became much higher in states with Republican governors by mid-summer and through 2020, possibly reflecting COVID-19 policy differences between GOP- and Democrat-led states, according to a study led by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Medical University of South Carolina.


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The results, published online March 10 in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, suggest that policy differences between Republican- and Democrat-governed states, including mitigation measures such as mask mandates and social distancing requirements, may have led to systematic differences in COVID-19's impact on public health, the researchers say.

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Other studies have found evidence that Republican governors in 2020 were broadly less strict than their Democrat counterparts in setting policies on mask-wearing, social distancing, and other pandemic-related measures. The researchers say that those studies, along with the links they found between Republican governorship and greater COVID-19 impact, are consistent with the idea that the political polarization of the COVID-19 response has contributed to less effective COVID-19 policies and worse case-related statistics in some states.

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