Ezra Klein wrote this weekend about a new study that tries to figure out why some countries did better with COVID-19 than others. Since COVID affects older people more severely than younger people, countries with older populations generally had more COVID deaths than younger countries. That was it. Nothing else had much predictive power.
But what about infection rates?
More unexpected was what the researchers found when they looked at the factors that predicted how many people got infected. Some of the obvious candidates — population density, G.D.P. per capita, and exposure to past coronaviruses — failed to predict much in the way of outcomes. But both trust in government and trust in fellow citizens proved potent.
....This yields the paper’s most striking finding: Moving every country up to the 75th percentile in trust in government — that’s where Denmark sits — would have prevented 13 percent of global infections. Moving every country to the 75th percentile of trust in their fellow citizens — roughly South Korea’s level — would have prevented 40 percent of global infections.
Here is distrust of government in the United States:
Running a simple regression shows that despite the ups and downs, distrust of government changed little between 1980 and 2000. But since 2000 it's soared.
Next up is something called affective polarization. Roughly speaking, this is how negatively you feel toward the opposite political party. Here are the results from a recent study:
The authors rammed a linear regression through the data (left chart), as they did for all the countries they studied, but even a brief eyeball examination suggests there's nothing linear about this (right chart). From 1980 through 2000 nothing much changed, but from 2000 through 2020 everybody went crazy. Dislike of the other party skyrocketed more than 50%.
In other words, starting around 2000 both distrust of government and our dislike of people in the other party shot up. And if anything explains our lousy response to COVID, even though we were rich and well prepared, that's it.
So what happened? I think you all know the answer, but here's one more chart presented in a slightly unusual way. It shows the average primetime audience for Fox News:
Obviously the trendline is flat from 1980-2000 since Fox News didn't even start broadcasting until 1996. But Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich and Matt Drudge had provided fertile ground for explosive growth. Nothing happened for the first few years as Fox struggled to get carried by cable outlets throughout the country, but starting in 2000, with carriage contracts in place, their viewership skyrocketed.
Correlation is not causation. The year 2000 featured the Florida election debacle and the beginning of the George W. Bush administration, while 2001 featured the start of the war on terror. But Florida faded in people's memories; George Bush practically disappeared in 2009; and the war on terror lost most of its momentum by the end of the aughts. And yet, both distrust of government and dislike of the opposite political party continued to grow.
Only Fox News stayed around this whole time, spewing its toxic blend of white fear, vilification of liberals, and scorn of government. None of those was new, but it was Fox News that weaponized them, packaging them with all the skills and glitz of modern marketing and promoting them relentlessly on ostensible TV news programs. It's been enormously successful, and probably would have been enough to turn conservatives into vaccine skeptics all by itself. But just in case it wasn't, Fox also spent much of 2021 airing an explicit vaccine skepticism to its primed and rabid viewers.
Why? Because it made a lot of money for Rupert Murdoch.
The idea that partisanship resulted in many more Covid deaths in the US, compared to similar countries, is likely true. However, I THINK the issue is much more complicated than say just Fox News or even the GOP. If you look at the data, black Americans have the lowest vaccination rate by race. Similar, the 18 – 24 and 25 – 39 year old age groups are reasonably low on vaccinations. The groups I just highlighted are disproportionally Democratic.
Stated differently, if black Americans were vaccinated at the national average how many lives would be saved? Basically, the data is more mixed than its all Fox News fault…
https://usafacts.org/visualizations/covid-vaccine-tracker-states/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=ND-COVID-Vaccine&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIieadvvbt9QIVdzytBh26sgtVEAAYASAAEgI07fD_BwE
I would like to see the vaccination data broken down by health coverage status, which is likely to correlate with age and race. And in any case, data should be used to improve communication, counter misinformation, and design targeted programs; not to lay blame.
KenSchulz - the vaccinate, as you well know, is free: a person without insurance has, basically, the same access as an insured individual.
I am blaming a group: rather, the idea that some of the largest low vaccination rate groups are not, broadly speaking, Fox News watchers contradicts Kevin's analysis in the article.
typo...I am NOT blaming a group/s///
You are missing the point, I believe. Your counter analysis implies that the growth in distrust of government was uniform across all demographics, but there is no evidence of that. Blacks have historically been distrustful of government - even Democratic-led government for a very long time. Before Fox ever came into being. What Fox tapped into and fed as part of their business plan, was distrust of government and mainstream media. And linked MSM with Democrats to supercharge that distrust.
Once again, supported by the data, there are many groups (people under 40, Hispanics, blacks) that have below average vaccination rates.
Sure, Fox News /right wing media has a role. BUT the challenge is significantly more complicated than Fox.
My point, the left (I include myself in this group) WANTS to blame Fox. The right (I include many people I know) want to blame young people, blacks etc. The truth is much more complicated than either side wants to admit...
As I said, Blacks - and Hispanics, I suppose - have a longstanding distrust of government that at least in part made them less likely to get a vaccine. But there are far more visible and vocal white working class who are resisting vaccines for purely political reasons - so called "freedom." and it would be very hard not to attribute most of these to the rightwing media ecosystem, with Fox News its leading source.
But Indigenous populations have one of the highest rates of vaccination, in no small measure due Indian Health Service intervention.
Well, now you’re oversimplifying. Yes, I as an over educated white guy who reads the news and signed up for texts from two state health departments, know that vaccinations are free and where to obtain them, and I see a physician regularly and get reminded. People without coverage are less likely to have a regular physician, to be as fully informed, and to be more hesitant seeking services.
“…. the idea that some of the largest low vaccination rate groups are not, broadly speaking, Fox News watchers contradicts Kevin's analysis in the article.“
Maybe. The neighborhood I live in used to be almost all black. I’m Hispanic. More than once during the past couple of decades, I had one of my black neighbors come to me and yell at me to go back to where I came from and stop taking their jobs. My fam has been here for hundreds of years. Where do you think my black neighbors got the idea that all Hispanics are illegals? Not from the Democrats. Not ABC or CBS.
the vaccinate, as you well know, is free: a person without insurance has, basically, the same access as an insured individual.
It's more problematic than that, and highlights one way America's lack of a truly universal, government-guaranteed healthcare coverage system has hurt the country, in my view. That is, a lot of non-rich Americans simply aren't in the habit of interacting with the healthcare system. They avoid it, and delay care, because they lack insurance. They don't have a family physician in their phone contacts. There's no go-to professional source to get medical questions answered. And so on.
So, I suspect that a significant (though by no means all) part of the problem wrt low POC vaccination rates flows from this dynamic. (And just how effective has vaccine outreach been in the US, especially in states dominated by the GOP?). Also, about 3-4% of the US population is undocumented. That's a higher percentage, I reckon, than most (or any?) high income countries. And this population for obvious reasons may be reluctant to deal with professionals in healthcare settings (one is asked to fill out a form; asked to show ID, etc), especially after four years of Trump.
I do think "lack of trust" and excessive polarization accounts for the bulk of America's low rate of vaccination; but that dynamic operates on top of the substrate of a weak healthcare safety net that is riddled with holes many people fall through.
Good explanation of the systemic problem.
Very likely, a non-targeted program, universal health-care coverage, could have improved vaccination rates across the board. We don’t have it, precisely because of a coördinated right-wing campaign that sowed and fomented mistrust of government for the last 60 years.
One of the interesting things about vaccine reluctance has been the lack of much racial difference in vaccine uptake among children for typical childhood vaccines:
https://minorityhealth.hhs.gov/omh/browse.aspx?lvl=4&lvlid=22
The big racial differences in vaccination only start to show up in adulthood.
I would think a combination of public-school vaccination requirements, and CHIP.
Vaccination rates are only relevant since vaccines became available. The US had a very high covid death rate before vaccines became available and has continued to have a very high covid death rate since vaccinations became available. Unquestionably, a higher vaccination rate would have lead to a lower covid death rate, but probably not enough lower to change the US's position relative to other countries.
If you run a month by month comparison of covid death rates in the US and Canada, you can see the difference a border makes. Even in the early days of vaccine availability, when the US had more vaccines available and consequently was vaccinating a higher percentage of its population, the US death rate was about triple the Canadian rate.
Unquestionably, a higher vaccination rate would have lead to a lower covid death rate, but probably not enough lower to change the US's position relative to other countries.'
The numbers suggest otherwise. The United Kingdom in early 2021 had suffered slightly more (per capita) accumulated covid deaths than the United States. The latter, a year later, is now something like 20% worse than than the UK. Britons are fully vaccinated/boosted in significantly higher numbers than Americans.
This kind of comparison can be made with other high income countries, too (indeed with quite a few non-rich countries). America has seen increasingly sluggish vaccine uptake over the last ten months or so, and has consequently seen its position deteriorate relative to many other countries in terms of covid death toll.
It only takes a minute to look up info before pulling stuff out of ? Black people are vaccinated at a higher rate than white people, as a % of the population. "As of January 31, 2022, CDC reported that race/ethnicity was known for 74% of people who had received at least one dose of the vaccine. White people make up a smaller share of people who have received at least one dose (56%) and people who have recently received a vaccination (36%) compared to their share of the total population (61%). Black people make up 10% of people who have received at least one dose of the vaccine compared to 12% of the total population (12%); their share of people who have received a vaccination in the last fourteen days is slightly higher at 14%. Hispanic people make up a larger share of vaccinated people (20%) and people who recently received a vaccination (34%) compared to their share of the total population (17%). The share of vaccinated people who are Asian is similar to their share of the total population (7%, and 6%, respectively), while they make up a slightly higher share (8%) of people initiating vaccination in the last 14 days. " https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/issue-brief/latest-data-on-covid-19-vaccinations-by-race-ethnicity/
FOAD, troll.
MiddleOfTheRoadDem is just Sober Shooter.
+😀
In fairness, those dates also correspond pretty well to growth in internet usage.
Yes, but Kevin doesn’t have the Internet bit clenched between his teeth…
"How America was radicalized by Tubgirls & Turkish kissers".
And maybe my eyeballs need tested, but if you remove that last data point, that linear fit doesn't look so bad to me.
So, a “news” outlet watched in prime time by less than one percent of the population is responsible for 70 to 80 percent of the country distrusting government?
Great point! Further, Kevin's analysis is not supported by the data in another way: black Americans (I will have to look up the data), I would bet, are not strong Fox News watchers. Yet black Americans have the lowest vaccination rates, by far, in the US.
Yes, but Blacks make up only about 12% of the population (more in some states, esp. in the South), so lower or higher vaccination rates in that group aren't going to move the needle much one way or another. If half of Black people are unvaccinated, that's not as significant as 20% of white people remaining unvaccinated. Also, Blacks have their own reasons for being distrustful of government and the medical establishment that don't involve ignorant political tribalism.
It may well be true, that Fox News is significant in low vaccination rates such as working class white in Alabama.
The point I was making, Fox News likely it not a significant reason why some large groups of people (blacks, people under 40, Hispanics) are not vaccinated. The groups I just mentioned represent a LOT of Americans
You don't have to watch Fox News religiously to be exposed to Fox-generated talking points about not getting vaccinated. It's really the whole right-wing media ecosystem that ensnares people, starting with something on Fox, but then getting recycled/rebroadcast incessantly through AM talk radio, Sinclair-owned local news stations, podcasts, your crazy uncle on Faceboook, and finally back to a Fox morning program or something. This is how some bullshit conspiracy theory circles the globe twice before a reasoned, science-based explanation for something even gets its shoes on.
jte21 - I can't prove it but it seems improbable to me that the reason many blacks have not taken a free Covid shot is because of Tucker Carlson....
Fox Newz b.s. travels way beyond the tee-vee.
Fox's influence goes way beyond their 1% viewership. The students I tutored in GED math are far too young to watch Fox, but they parrot the Fox talking points all the time - they've absorbed them through word of mouth, becuase it's what they want to hear.
Fine, but an 80x multiplier?
The 1% figure is (a) suspect, and (b) irrelevant anyway, since Fox spews their toxic lies and propaganda 24/7, not just in prime time newscasts.
It's not the same 1% of people who are watching Fox continuously. Nor does one actually have to watch it oneself--we're social animals, and community behavior norms tend towards the median of what people see and experience. If you have a network actively pulling even a minority of folks in one direction, that pull gets spread throughout the community.
Because those people make the loudest noise among their idiot friends and acquaintances who see no news at all.
Kevin's gone over this before: Fox News attracts something like 60 million sets of unique eyeballs weekly. But sure, at any one snapshot in time, the numbers don't look overwhelming.
For the record I think Kevin's thesis is about half right: what it doesn't explain is why so many Americans are receptive to Murdochian spin in the first place. Most of Kevin's commenters aren't receptive. And I'd say the numbers suggest a modest majority of the country share that trait with us. But what's the deal with the other 40-45% of us?
Typical for the NYT, and Klein (who professes to be an expert on polarization), but how in God's name do you write an entire essay about the terrible death toll resulting from American distrust in government and never once mention how we got here?
Imagine an article about pool safety and how Americans fail to measure up to other countries, which do a much better job of it, then ending with the question, "What does good pool safety policy look like for a society with too many alligators in the pool?" Those alligators did not get in the pool all by themselves. But to even suggest a causal factor would mean someone is at fault. Nope, we can't have any of that kind of partisan editorializing enter the discussion.
I think this remains the quote that defines our era.
Ron Suskind, October 2004:
The aide [Karl Rove] said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, e create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."
https://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/magazine/faith-certainty-and-the-presidency-of-george-w-bush.html
My pick for defining quote: "Government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem." - Ronald Reagan
Very good point. I think this is the core of it. Kevin is right that Fox is the center of the right-wing media culture that spreads lies, about covid and most everything else. But the Republican Party has been waging a war against government, and the common good, for decades. I would add to that Reagan quote a precursor quote from William Buckley, in the fifties: "I would rather be governed by the first 2,000 people in the telephone directory than by the faculty of Harvard University." He presumably wanted people to think he trusted in the wisdom of the common man, but what he was really expressing was the unlikelihood of getting some of the smartest, best educated, most professionally thoughtful and skeptical people (i.e., the Harvard faculty) to adopt conservative principles, and that for conservatism to win they would need lots of low-information voters. And so since then they have gone after them with a vengeance. The entire point of Fox is to pander to and create low-information voters, who will be vulnerable to whatever the Republican Party wants to sell them. Including the sentiment expressed by Reagan in that quote.
And this from Barry Goldwater: “Throughout history, government has proved to be the chief instrument for thwarting man’s liberty.“
The goal of small-government conservatism is to weaken into impotence any institution that counters business interests; the ultimate goal is corporatocracy unchallenged by unions or government.
Agree. I think the Reagan and Goldwater quotes are apt for describing the right-wing agenda. The Rove/Suskind quote is best for how the right expects to gain and maintain power.
how in God's name do you write an entire essay about the terrible death toll resulting from American distrust in government and never once mention how we got here?'
Klein's piece isn't about "the terrible death toll" as such, but rather, it focuses on making the case that most of the country's unique challenge with respect to covid flows from the low-trust dynamic.
He's basically saying: the reality is trust is low in the US, so what kind of government covid response, moving forward, is consistent with that reality?
I'd say he's right. We're not Denmark, and formulating pandemic policies as if we were Denmark isn't likely to do much good. It would be live giving cancer drugs to a diabetic.
Murdoch doesn't care about money. He cares about being the unaccountable power behind the throne. He cares about being able to control, else break, the Government of the day.
Does anyone have a recommendation on the "best" book that covers Fox News' history with a focus on the most reputable studies/research on its impact?
I don't understand the theory that Fox News increased distrust of government during the Bush administration. Fox was generally a supporter of the Bush administration. It's more plausible to me that the mindless hostility to the Bush administration from Democrats increased distrust of the government among Democrats, that Republicans responded in kind during the Obama administration, and that the gates of havoc have been opened. It certainly wasn't Fox News that put up all the "Bushitler" signs in my (very blue) neighborhood.
How much of Democratic opposition to the Bush administration was ‘mindless’, and how much was reasonable given its mistaken policies - invading Iraq, attempting ‘nation-building’ in Afghanistan, failing to effectively pursue Bin Laden …. Also, mistrust of Bush administration, which concocted lies about WMD =/= mistrust of government.
Distrust in government doesn't mean distrust of the party in power. It means distrust of a pluralistic society. The mindless hostility to Democrats from the Bush Administration increased distrust of the government among Republicans.
And the "Bushitler" signs in your neighborhood fall a bit short of objective polling in my estimation. YMMV.
Justifying a pointless war in Iraq using BS shook my confidence in the Bush administration.
That was one tough neighborhood you lived in. I lived in very blue Massachusetts during the GWB years, and I never saw anything like that. Bush was ridiculed by liberals as being a lightweight. Cheney was distrusted - for good reasons. Fox, at the time, was supportive of Bush, and used their classic "Democrats want to destroy America by making it socialist, and the mainstream media is their accomplice" message to do it. What their growing viewership failed to understand was that FN's "fair and balanced" (as opposed to the MSM) tag line was no more accurate than Coca Cola's.
There was NOTHING mindless about Democratic hostility to the W. Bush regime. History has yet to decide whether Bush or Trump is, finally, the more destructive of the American experiment. Let us count the ways: 9/11, Iraq, Afghanistan, Hurricane Katrina, and a global financial meltdown. These were the moments when the US toppled from its position as global hegemon. And let's not ignore an attempt to privatize Social Security. How is it that someone reading this blog does not know this?
That isn't it in the least.
After the Bush campaign proved they could just steal the election and get away with it their supporters discovered they still had all the Democrats to deal with like they hadn't gotten away with anything at all, and they were freaked out and offended by it, no one was respecting their parade of crime, and Fox capitalized on this.
BAAAAAAAAAAAANT! Proof of 'mindless hostility to the Bush Administration' is backed by absolutely zero evidence, let alone evidence that is remotely persuasive or credible.
FOAD, you stinking little troll.
"Mistrust in traditional, FDR-style, pro-globalization, activist liberal government" * is probably a more precise way to put it. The flames of that kind of mistrust can definitely be fanned even when there's a Republican president.
*Steve Bannon-style right wing populism, in other words.
Why? Because it made a lot of money for Rupert Murdoch.
Buckets of blood on one's hands are a small price to leave one's heirs eleven instead of ten figures.
Perhaps this is why they're so flipped out about mask wearing,
If the government can impose mask wearing as a matter of public health, they can ban Fox News as a matter of public health.
I mean, I can't be the only of late who's thought, how is vaccine misinformation substantively different from yelling "fire" in a crowded theater?
Exactly, can't a judge issue an injunction, or cease and desist, and if they don't comply shut down Fox completely?
Also, conservatives will often like to insist society doesn't really exist, and that we are all just a mass of exclusively self-interested and isolated, rugged individuals, wallowing in piggish self-gratifications with no regard for anyone or anything else.
So, just a mob of people.
Fox didn't create them, it validates them.
They say that, but as soon as they have some weird conspiracy to follow suddenly it “where we go one we go all”. The irony doesn’t faze them a bit.
It's pretty clear that Fox News was the catalyst, but we're far beyond Fox News now. We've had quite a few years of intensive misinformation on a variety of platforms, like Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, etc. Fox News isn't even the only player in the right-wing cable "news" genre. I have a feeling that Fox News could disappear tomorrow and there would be no discernible decrease in lack of trust or misinformation. In fact, some of the craziest stuff (like Qanon) is developed elsewhere and then only appears on Fox News once it's clear that it has gained a foothold with the viewership. Fox News is in a reaction mode these days.
The same regulatory environment that let Fox News flourish is letting all sorts of other media companies get rich off of misinformation. Plus, Fox viewers are old. The younger ones are getting the crazy elsewhere.
Drum is trying to tell a story. Coronavirus historically attacks the weak of society greater than influenza, mainly because it is the weaker virus.
America has the shittiest diet, are the fattest lards. The least naturopath. Libertarians that try and sell it, but don't really get it like counterculture types, they just eat Oreos while looking for $$$$$ selling it. Europe is less fat and in better shape. They keep their vit d up. The remove toxins from food.
Responses are irrelevant in the end. It's what is practised traditionally that counts.
Kevin, this has been brought in the comments many times, but I'll do it once more. From week to week, or even post to post, you seem to flip from "Fox News drove the GOP and it's voters insane with hate, fear and racism" to "Liberals are big meanies, and if they just were nicer to republicans and not so damn judgey and negative all would be well". These two conjectures seem to be repeated again and again, but also seem to be directly contradictory. I, and I think many readers, would be interested in how you believe both to be true and coherent points of view.
The fundamental flaw in Drum's reasoning here seems to rely on people forgetting all of the things he listed. You see, I do remember the 2000 SCOTUS stolen election. I do remember the huge failure of the Bush Administration preventing 9/11, which was very preventable if his Administration cared. I remember the subsequent (unwarranted) good will that the entire Bush Administration exploited to secure support for invading and occupying Iraq, a policy every member of the Bush Admin had wanted for many years prior to 9/11 providing the pretext. I remember the financial bubble that the Bush Admin did everything to inflate and then not a single person not named Bernie Madoff paid any price for.
Oh, and I remember how much more awful our politics and institutions have gotten since 2009. You know, because those things continue to happen, very much including still not holding Trump accountable for ANYTHING. Sure, Fox has been a very negative actor here, but to blame all of this on Fox is ludicrous. Our institutions do, in fact, suck...a lot. And there is no indication that they are improving. Our judicial system certainly hasn't improved re holding white collar criminals accountable. Again, see Trump.
I remember all that like it was yesterday. Just like it was only a few years ago my soon-to-be-thirty daughter was in the seventh grade 🙁
In the case of 9/11 - Iraq, it wasn’t just Fox. I consider the American media buying into the Bush lies one of its greatest failures ever. A front page apology by the New York Times didn’t bring back a single dead soldier. That really damaged the public’s trust, in my opinion.
Dude. It looks way more like 2003. Your chart shows distrust declining until THE IRAQ WAR.
Oops. I put my post just above before I saw yours. …. Obviously, I agree.
The distrust graph made me think of these events... sure FOX News, but...
Bush vs Gore (Florida Recount)
9/11
Occupation of Afganistan
Invasion of Iraq under false pretenses (WMD)
War on Terror
Bush/Cheney Torture regime
Katrina
Economic Meltdown (mortgage back securities)
Bailing out the Banks
Occupy Wall Street
Election of Obama
Blacklash
Black Swan Election of Trump via Electoral College
Russian disinfo
This all seems to track from 9/11 onward...
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Correlation is not causation, until you have an unending series of tight correlations across domains, then (as any amateur statistician knows) correlation is indeed accepted as causative. Inductive reasoning, the scientific method, etc.
Can we just stop arguing the point? It's Fox News, period. The intuitively obvious is cemented in the numbers. Propaganda works, amazingly well. That's all there is to it. Advertising sells; people are socially wired and wired for cognitive shortcuts, lots of them, and the fundamentals of this have been explicitly stated and exploited by propagandists good and bad for eternity. Please get over it and accept the obvious.
Jesus, it's angels on a pin here. It's Fox News. Period.
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