Florida politics prove deadly when it comes to COVID

COVID is killing more people per 100,000 in red states than in blue states, Axios' Will Chase and Caitlin Owens report.

Why it matters: "The COVID-19 pandemic removed any doubt that state policies can affect health outcomes," Virginia Commonwealth University professor Steven Woolf recently argued in JAMA.

Zoom in: Florida ranks 16 out of the top 25 states in deaths per 100,000 residents, per new data from the CDC.

• At least 73,018 Floridians have died from COVID-19.

By the numbers: Death rates in Florida and Georgia (more than 200 deaths per 100,000) were much higher than in states with largely vaccinated populations such as New York (112 per 100,000), New Jersey (73 deaths per 100,000), and Massachusetts (50 per 100,000).

• Between August and December 2021, Florida experienced more than triple the number of excess deaths (29,252) as New York (8,786), despite both states having similar population counts — 21.7 million and 19.3 million, respectively.

Between the lines: The partisan gap across the states, measured by deaths above what would normally be expected, was particularly stark during last year's Delta wave, when all adults had access to vaccines but stark differences emerged between the vaccination rates of Democrats and Republicans.

The bottom line: The virus has proved itself to be exhaustingly unpredictable in many ways over the last two years.

• But there's no doubt that tools like high-quality masks and vaccines reduce the risk of catching the virus, and in the case of vaccines, of dying from it.