States With GOP Govs May See Big Death Spike

The COVID-19 pandemic is hitting harder in counties where President Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in the 2016 general election. 

States with Republican governors are projected to have a greater increase in fatalities than those with Democratic governors, according to a new Yahoo Finance analysis of the University of Washington Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME)  coronavirus projected death toll model. 

The analysis, which reviewed and compared the death toll for all 50 states and Washington, D.C., found that 8 of the top 10 projected to have death tolls that rise over 150% from their current figures, have Republican governors.  

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In fact, according to the analysis, the COVID-19 pandemic is hitting harder in counties where President Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in the 2016 general election. 

The Republican-led states with the largest projected increase in fatalities are headed by Arizona in the number one spot, with a projected 541% increase in deaths from the novel coronavirus. The rest include South Dakota, Missouri, Alabama, Iowa, Florida, Mississippi, and North Dakota.

Minnesota, which by August 4 is projected to have a 271% increase in fatalities from the current count of 559, is the only one of the top 5 states in the list to have a Democratic governor.  

That may be because Democratic governors moved quicker to take preventive action than their Republican counterparts, and “issued [stay-at-home] orders three to four days sooner than Republican governors, on average,” according to an analysis published early in April by The Conversation, an independent source of analysis and expert opinion written by academics and researchers.

Republican governors, on the other hand, for the most part adhered to President Trump’s lead, minimizing the imminent threat of the illness.   

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Projections Nearly Double after Easing Restrictions

The easing of restrictions in Republican-led states eager to reopen restaurants and businesses to boost the sagging economy, such as lockdown orders and social distancing measures, has caused the University of Washington’s projections of deaths in the U.S. from COVID-19 to nearly double, rising from an estimated 73,000 to a new estimate of almost 138,000 fatalities.

Florida may be a good case in point. After Republican Governor Ron DeSantis allowed most counties in the state to reopen starting Monday, May 4, a count by ABC News revealed that there have been more than 2,500 new confirmed cases of coronavirus in the state. Florida also saw 316 new deaths in that same time period. 

The three counties considered the hot zone for the pandemic – Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach have had to wait, as they have been accountable for more than 50% of all confirmed cases and deaths in the state. 

But on Friday Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Giménez announced a possible reopening date for some of Miami-Dade county’s businesses.  This, despite the fact that the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluationresearch center, which has helped to determine the government’s reaction to coronavirus, now projects more than 5,400 deaths in Florida by August 1st. The current number of deaths in the state is now at 1,779 fatalities.

An Urgent Warning

On Tuesday, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Directo Dr. Anthony Fauci warned of the dangers of reopening without adhering to White House guidelines, saying that it needs “to the best extent possible, to go by the guidelines which have been very well thought out and delineated.” Failure to do so could have “serious consequences,” he said.