COVID ravages the Republican Party as 21 out of 23 most infected states voted for Trump

Last week, the hashtag "GOPDeathCult" was trending on social media as Republican governors continued to refuse to take precautions to keep their states safe. The recent COVID-19 numbers now show that out of the 23 worst states for the virus in the country, 21 of them voted for Donald Trump in the last election.

The Washington Post revealed that of the 23 states in the country that exceed the national COVID average, all but two of those are from Republican states.

"This isn't a game," President Joe Biden said Friday about governors who aren't taking the pandemic seriously.

Sadly, the same high numbers for COVID cases apply to COVID deaths. Of the 18 states that have higher death rates than the national average, 14 voted for Trump. For vaccinations, the statistic shows the 17 least-vaccinated states (except for Georgia) voted for Trump.

The chain of correlation makes it "much harder to assert that politics is not playing a role," wrote the Post's correspondent Philip Bump.

"Republicans have been less concerned about the virus, less likely to embrace practices such as masking, more likely to express opposition to vaccination and (obviously) voted more heavily for Trump," said Bump. "States that are seeing the most new cases and deaths are states that are less heavily vaccinated and were more supportive of Trump last year."

There are still many Republicans who say that they will never get the vaccine, which could lead to further red-state infections and deaths. Those who haven't been vaccinated may have survived COVID-19, but given the rapid pace that the virus is evolving, it's possible people could begin getting it again.

Read the full piece at The Washington Post.