A new study conducted by Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Medical University of South Carolina has concluded the obvious – states with Republican governors had higher COVID case rates and higher death rates from COVID.  In the report, study senior author Sara Benjamin-Neelon, PhD, professor in the Bloomberg School’s Department of Health, Behavior and Society stated,

“Governors’ party affiliation may have contributed to a range of policy decisions that, together, influenced the spread of the virus.  These findings underscore the need for state policy actions that are guided by public health considerations rather than by partisan politics.”

I know this is like concluding in an academic study that gravity makes things fall down, but it’s good that they quantified in a peer reviewed study what we all knew to begin with – politicizing public health policy gets people killed.