GOP State Politicos Push Quack COVID Cures

Republican state lawmakers in Colorado, Florida, Idaho, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Mississippi, Indiana, Virginia, and West Virginia have proposed legislation that allows quack doctors to prescribe ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine to prevent and treat Covid-19 which, despite pronouncements on Fox News and right-wing podcasts, they do not do. North Dakota and Tennessee have already passed such laws, even though:

” … those treatments have not proven effective at preventing or treating Covid and infectious disease experts see the bills as examples of right-wing lawmakers politicizing medicine – a trend that is increasing as the pandemic wears on in America in to its third year amid an increasingly fraught political atmosphere.

And so it goes with the latest suspect Covid-19 treatment that has become about more than just a drug, but rather about whether to trust established public health organizations or doctors who stray from their guidelines, and podcast and cable news hosts.”

— “Concern as Republicans push to make dubious Covid cure prescriptions easier,” Eric Berger, The Guardian

More:

“Republicans Are Changing State Medical Board Rules So It’s Easier For Doctors To Prescribe Hydroxychloroquine And Ivermectin,” Kadia Goba, BuzzFeed News

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Trump-Supporting Areas Are COVID Death Holes

Republicans are now the largest unvaccinated group in the United States, and mistrust official sources of information about COVID-19 and vaccines. People living in counties that voted for Donald Trump in the 2020 election have been nearly three times as likely to die from COVID-19:

“NPR looked at deaths per 100,000 people in roughly 3,000 counties across the U.S. from May 2021, the point at which vaccinations widely became available. People living in counties that went 60% or higher for Trump in November 2020 had 2.7 times the death rates of those that went for Biden. Counties with an even higher share of the vote for Trump saw higher COVID-19 mortality rates.

In October, the reddest tenth of the country saw death rates that were six times higher than the bluest tenth, according to Charles Gaba, an independent health care analyst who’s been tracking partisanship trends during the pandemic and helped to review NPR’s methodology. Those numbers have dropped slightly in recent weeks, Gaba says: ‘It’s back down to around 5.5 times higher.'”

— “Pro-Trump counties now have far higher COVID death rates. Misinformation is to blame,” Daniel Wood and Geoff Brumfiel, NPR

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Image by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

Comments are welcome if they are on-topic, substantive, concise, and not boring or obscene. Comments may be edited for clarity and length.