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
To be fair, anti-vax attitudes are hardly confined to the US and to Republicans.
People who voted for the populist right-wing AfD party in Germany were also more vaccine-sceptic than most, as were supporters of populist parties in France.
But the breadth and depth of anti-vax attitudes in those countries and parties was far less than what we see with the Republicans in the US.
Notably, there was no partisan gap on vaccines in the UK, where a populist right-wing government championed the shots.
By May 2021, with all US adults eligible for vaccination, less than half of Republicans had taken up the offer, compared to 82% of Dems. In the UK: Labour and Conservative voters alike turned up in droves, with 90% of eligible adults inoculated by the same date. Even among backers of the populist, anti-establishment Reform party, 70% had been jabbed.
It’s tragic that anti-vax attitudes, and anti-scientific views more generally have become so deeply embedded in the US political divide.
With pandemics likely a recurring part of our future, anti-vax attitudes and the populist movements that carry them will continue to hamper public health campaigns across the world. But no developed country has a problem as entrenched and as lethal as the US.
You can read my piece here (first 300 clicks free) https://enterprise-sharing.ft.com/redeem/b85e6fab-8b15-4371-aace-3b6306b636dd
This is the revenge of the Christian Right. The revenge for modernity and the triumph of science and reason. And for their marginalization in politics and culture since two centuries. Brace yourself for more of their rage.
John Burn-Murdoch 
Robert Wutz