Morning folks, time for my first Mastodon thread (!)
Ahead of the #midterms tomorrow, I want to talk about the tragic politicisation of science in the US.
It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when the Republicans became the anti-science party, but the process probably began in the 1980s, when the Christian right first emerged as a major force in conservative American politics.
Since then, the journey has been smooth and swift, and there is now a stunning partisan divide on confidence in science 😥
It would be easy to dismiss this trend as merely exasperating — a source of irritation at family gatherings — but over the past 18 months, this partisan divide may have cost as many as 60,000 American lives
This is the stark implication of a study by @paulgp and others, which found that since Covid vaccines became widely available, the mortality rate of registered Republicans in Ohio and Florida climbed by 33% during America’s winter Covid wave last year, compared with just 10% among Democrats
Excess death rates were already higher among Republicans before vaccines came online, possibly due to red states taking a more lax stance on social distancing etc, but once vaccines came on line, the gap widened dramatically 📈
And to be clear, this is after adjusting for age, so it can’t be explained by Republicans simply being older on average. This is the result of a party and its voters turning away from science
@jburnmurdoch For one particularly striking case study, see Florida.
Before DeSantis went full MAGA on COVID in May 2021, Florida's death rate was near the national average.
But since DeSantis went full MAGA — by preempting local officials in May 2021, then blowing off doctors' warnings of a summer surge, and then increasingly pandering to anti-vaxxers — Florida has suffered the highest COVID death rate among large states and the 4th highest death rate among all states:
John Burn-Murdoch 
The Democratic Difference
Blessedtraveler