dhork@lemmy.world 1 month ago
COVID has already had an impact on the election. The census date was April 1, 2020. In March of 2020, COVID had started to severely hit NYC but was only ramping up in other areas. NY ended up losing a congressional seat in that census, by only 89 people. There’s no doubt that COVID’s timing screwed up NY State’s congressional map, and contributed to the slim Republican majority in this year’s census.
doggle@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 month ago
Yikes. We’re all thinking about how covid disproportionately affects the elderly, but it also disproportionately affects people who live in denser population centers.
I don’t like talking about pandemics in terms of which political party they help, but I guess the dems may have been hit harder in the end…
spidermanchild@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
I’m too lazy to look this up, but I believe death rates were higher out of cities vs in cities. Half the reason hospitals were packed in cities is because rural people went where the ventilators were. Everywhere had all the covid waves, they just hit cities first.
Elderly tend to be more R, and D folks were more likely to mask and vaccinate. But elderly vaccinated pretty well across the board and the divide was bigger in the young. Lots of factors, but my money is on D making out slightly better as a broad cohort. Tragic all around though.
Ok I did some searching and excess mortality points to higher rural impact, but official cause of death data is mixed (too lazy to link though).
…upenn.edu/…/penn-sas-comparing-urban-and-rural-e…
dhork@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Oh yeah, everything you wrote about excess mortality in rural vs urban areas is 100% correct. But the Census aimed to enumerate everyone living in the country as of April 1, 2020, and it hit NYC really hard right at the start. So the fact that the rest of the country eventually caught up with the mortality rate didn’t help NY State in the Census at all.