Back in the early days of the pandemic, there may have been little difference in fatalities between Democrats and Republicans. Masks were an imperfect defense (when medical masks were even available) and even people who were careful could let their guard down at the wrong time.

After the vaccines became available, however, dying of COVID became more of a matter of self-selection. Contrary to what many people listening to Republican media outlets were told, even the initial COVID vaccines were very effective at preventing death or hospitalization. This remained true as the disease mutated into different strains. There is a wealth of data, the CDC charts below are just one example, that shows that those who were vaccinated, especially with a booster, were much less likely to get sick, get hospitalized, or die from COVID than vaccine refuseniks. (If you say, "But what about deaths from vaccines, read the next section.")

The figure is a two-panel line graph illustrating the weekly trends in age-standardized incidence of COVID-19 cases (during April 4-December 25, 2021) and deaths (during April 4-December 4, 2021) for unvaccinated compared with fully vaccinated persons overall and by receipt of booster doses in 25 U.S. jurisdictions as well as the national weighted estimates of variant proportions.

And by this time, getting vaccinated had gotten political. In January 2022, the Kaiser Foundation found that partisan affiliation was the strongest predictor of COVID vaccination status in the US. On average, counties that voted for Biden had a vaccination rate that was more than 10 points higher than counties that voted for Trump.

This may be medical science, but it isn't rocket science. We would expect (unless we buy into anti-vax conspiracy theories) for counties with lower vaccination rates to have higher COVID death rates. That's exactly what the New York Times found when it examined the data.

Blue counties jumped out to an early lead at the onset of the pandemic for obvious reasons. We all remember how coastal cities and states were hit hard in the opening days of the pandemic.

But even before vaccines were introduced, red counties had taken a lead in the death toll. After widespread vaccinations, deaths in red counties continued a meteoric rise while rates slowed in blue and purple counties.