IT'S A MYSTERY:

Here is the month-by-month relationship between vaccination rates and either cases or deaths.

Notice the shifts since July. The red arrows below, marking the most-red counties, point more to the right: Their case and death rates increased along with vaccination rates. In the most-blue counties, the arrows from July to November point more up than to the right, meaning that vaccination rates rose much more than case or death rates.

If we look just at the increases in per capita totals during three periods -- before vaccines, during the early rollout and since that point -- we see that a relatively even increase in cases and deaths has become lopsided along a partisan axis. That axis, of course, correlates with vaccine uptake.

There is no guarantee that this pattern will hold. Winter is almost upon us and, last year, the Northeast got hammered. The Sun Belt was hit hard during this summer's fourth wave, spurred by the delta variant, and may be less likely to see a surge this winter. It's also possible that the omicron variant spurs a fifth surge of the virus that slams more-blue counties pushed indoors for the winter months.

All of the data, though, suggest that vaccination plays an important role in preventing infection, illness and death. According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the unvaccinated are at far more risk of those worst-case outcomes -- which might help explain why more-vaccinated blue counties saw slower growth in deaths during the fourth wave than cases. Hence Biden's call Monday to get vaccinated with the new variant looming.

But the problem, as always, is that the people who disproportionately need to be convinced to get vaccinated are also those least likely to follow Biden's lead.

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