I agree with your overall point but I'm really curious about your finding of no correlation between median county age and mortality. I've been doing a lot of analyses of the data from just the state of Ohio and within Ohio, a linear regression (weighted by county population) between county death rate and percent of county population > 65 years old has a correlation with R^2 = 0.63 (p < 1e-15). (The correlation is considerably stronger with percent over 65 than with median age but also quite strong with median age.) By contrast, death rate vs. Trump vote percentage has R^2 = 0.18 (p < 1e-4). This makes me wonder if when looking across different regions of the country there are other confounding factors that are masking the relationship between county age and mortality. Because within the single state I'm analyzing (which might eliminate some of the confounding factors) the relationship between the age of a county's population and its COVID death rate is just incredibly strong.
But if we limit the analysis to deaths since the end of June 2021, the results flip - the correlation with percent over 65 has R^2 = 0.16 (p = 0.00013), with Trump vote percentage R^2 = 0.43 (p < 1e-11). In a multivariate linear regression against both, Trump vote has p < 1e-8 and percent over 65 has p 0.086. Supporting that since the vaccine rollout, the major determinant of county death rate switched from population age to Trump support.
Sorry about the delay getting back to you. I am no statistician and my analysis is probably not as robust as yours. My methodology involved first finding the national average of what proportion of the country was 65 or over by race (i.e. 65 or over White, 64 or over African American, Native, Hispanic)
And then flagging each individual county if its demographics exceeded those of the national average in any racial category. I.e. did it have more 65+ Native Americans than the national average of 65+ Native Americans, etc.
After that, I computed a crude population fatality ratio (PFR), which is just the # of deaths from COVID in the county compared to the county population
And then tried to find a correlation between counties with high PFRs and counties that exceeded the national average in any one of the racial age groups, above
There was a strong relationship of high PFR to age in all racial groups save one: Counties with a high percentage of non-hispanic whites
This led me to conclude that it is race, not age, driving high COVID death rates
In fact, I found some very low county PFRs in places with very high #s of older white people. This is what led me to believe that older white people, in particular, are much better able to shield themselves from COVID infections -- they aren't getting infected, so they are not dying was my conclusion. I see this particularly in the very-Trump but very old and very rich counties along Florida's coasts, for example
That makes sense to me. In the first two waves of the pandemic the disease was new, healthcare professionals had few treatments, PPE was in short supply, masking and social distancing were rare. I suspect that in those waves the correlation between deaths and percentage of the local population 60+ was very high.
In subsequent waves that dynamic changed, particularly once vaccines were widely available. Then behavioral factors (vaccine resistance, refusal to mask or social distance) came to dominate. As the author points out, these are correlated with voting preference.
As a crude indicator, you can look at state level per capita Covid deaths, comparing overall pandemic to deaths in 2021. In the first metric you will find a mix of red and blue states with the highest per capita deaths, reflecting the blue state nexus of the first wave. If you look at the second metric, you will find that the states with the highest per capita deaths are predominantly red.
what about Nursing home deaths? At the beginning those were one of the biggest sources of deaths, after they instituted rigorous NPI's it went way down, and with vaccines even more so but how big was it initially?
True "Nursing Home" deaths are only about 10% of all COVID deaths. The issue has been confused by the media because the media typically reports "nursing home and long term care facility" deaths, which the public just hears as "nursing home."
Long term care facilities include people living IN THEIR OWN HOMES as well as people living in assisted, but largely independent (i.e. separate apartments) facilities
In short, 90% of COVID deaths do NOT occur in nursing homes
thanks for this. at our local county nursing home 2 whole floors were shut down and other residents consolidated on other floors because so many residents died. I do live in northeast and we got hit hard early on. It just skewed the numbers here. now 763 residents in my county have died, not sure what the total was from nursing homes.
It's not hard to imagine that congregate living of the nature of a nursing home would be an ideal environment for the spread of any infectious disease and the devastation in such facilities should surprise no one
What should be a surprise, morphing into outrage, is that we refuse to do anything about it because it's just old people
I agree with your overall point but I'm really curious about your finding of no correlation between median county age and mortality. I've been doing a lot of analyses of the data from just the state of Ohio and within Ohio, a linear regression (weighted by county population) between county death rate and percent of county population > 65 years old has a correlation with R^2 = 0.63 (p < 1e-15). (The correlation is considerably stronger with percent over 65 than with median age but also quite strong with median age.) By contrast, death rate vs. Trump vote percentage has R^2 = 0.18 (p < 1e-4). This makes me wonder if when looking across different regions of the country there are other confounding factors that are masking the relationship between county age and mortality. Because within the single state I'm analyzing (which might eliminate some of the confounding factors) the relationship between the age of a county's population and its COVID death rate is just incredibly strong.
But if we limit the analysis to deaths since the end of June 2021, the results flip - the correlation with percent over 65 has R^2 = 0.16 (p = 0.00013), with Trump vote percentage R^2 = 0.43 (p < 1e-11). In a multivariate linear regression against both, Trump vote has p < 1e-8 and percent over 65 has p 0.086. Supporting that since the vaccine rollout, the major determinant of county death rate switched from population age to Trump support.
Hi Jeff,
Sorry about the delay getting back to you. I am no statistician and my analysis is probably not as robust as yours. My methodology involved first finding the national average of what proportion of the country was 65 or over by race (i.e. 65 or over White, 64 or over African American, Native, Hispanic)
And then flagging each individual county if its demographics exceeded those of the national average in any racial category. I.e. did it have more 65+ Native Americans than the national average of 65+ Native Americans, etc.
After that, I computed a crude population fatality ratio (PFR), which is just the # of deaths from COVID in the county compared to the county population
And then tried to find a correlation between counties with high PFRs and counties that exceeded the national average in any one of the racial age groups, above
There was a strong relationship of high PFR to age in all racial groups save one: Counties with a high percentage of non-hispanic whites
This led me to conclude that it is race, not age, driving high COVID death rates
In fact, I found some very low county PFRs in places with very high #s of older white people. This is what led me to believe that older white people, in particular, are much better able to shield themselves from COVID infections -- they aren't getting infected, so they are not dying was my conclusion. I see this particularly in the very-Trump but very old and very rich counties along Florida's coasts, for example
Would love to discuss this further
That makes sense to me. In the first two waves of the pandemic the disease was new, healthcare professionals had few treatments, PPE was in short supply, masking and social distancing were rare. I suspect that in those waves the correlation between deaths and percentage of the local population 60+ was very high.
In subsequent waves that dynamic changed, particularly once vaccines were widely available. Then behavioral factors (vaccine resistance, refusal to mask or social distance) came to dominate. As the author points out, these are correlated with voting preference.
As a crude indicator, you can look at state level per capita Covid deaths, comparing overall pandemic to deaths in 2021. In the first metric you will find a mix of red and blue states with the highest per capita deaths, reflecting the blue state nexus of the first wave. If you look at the second metric, you will find that the states with the highest per capita deaths are predominantly red.
what about Nursing home deaths? At the beginning those were one of the biggest sources of deaths, after they instituted rigorous NPI's it went way down, and with vaccines even more so but how big was it initially?
True "Nursing Home" deaths are only about 10% of all COVID deaths. The issue has been confused by the media because the media typically reports "nursing home and long term care facility" deaths, which the public just hears as "nursing home."
Long term care facilities include people living IN THEIR OWN HOMES as well as people living in assisted, but largely independent (i.e. separate apartments) facilities
In short, 90% of COVID deaths do NOT occur in nursing homes
thanks for this. at our local county nursing home 2 whole floors were shut down and other residents consolidated on other floors because so many residents died. I do live in northeast and we got hit hard early on. It just skewed the numbers here. now 763 residents in my county have died, not sure what the total was from nursing homes.
It's not hard to imagine that congregate living of the nature of a nursing home would be an ideal environment for the spread of any infectious disease and the devastation in such facilities should surprise no one
What should be a surprise, morphing into outrage, is that we refuse to do anything about it because it's just old people