We all remember when COVID resulted in North America shutting down in March 2020. For me, my most vivid memories were all the sports shutting down starting with the NCAA basketball tournament games and then the drive home from Arizona, fearing that the border would close before we got to Canada. I remember us packing our food in Mesa so that at our hotel stops we are inside without leaving the room. I also remember wiping off the gas nozzles every time we filled up.

In the months that followed I remember Trump and Fox Entertainment continually downplaying COVID. Trump saying, ‘it will disappear just like magic’. Well, it didn’t and a lot of us died.

Yale University did a study of death rates in Florida and Ohio based on voter registration. They used the periods 2018 to the end of 2021. Remember that the COVID vaccine did not become available until early 2021. The study looked at the number of deaths before COVID, the number of deaths during the period that the COVID vaccine was not available and the number of deaths when vaccines were available.

Here is where it gets interesting. Overall, for the period 2020 and 2021 the number of excess Republican deaths (that is comparing republican deaths in 2020 and 2021 to pre-COVID 2018 and 2019) was 5.4% higher. When comparing the number of excess Republican deaths to excess Democrat deaths, the Republican number is 76% higher.

In the 2021 post0vaccine period, when Trump and Fox pushed the downplay of COVID and vaccines, the number of excess Democrat deaths compared to the 2018-2019 base was 1.6% higher while Republican excess deaths was 10.4% higher. The difference between the two parties was that Republican excess deaths was 153% higher than excess Democrat deaths.

What I am trying to say here is that far more Republicans would be alive today if they had listened to Dr. Fauci and to science rather than to Trump and Fox. Numbers don’t lie.