Is the Biden administration playing politics with COVID vaccines?
Bottom Line: While researching the latest on COVID vaccines for today’s Q&A - I noticed something glaring. Not only is Florida being shorted COVID-19 vaccines relative to our population – seemingly blue states were making out – at the expense of red states. For the purpose of this exercise, I’ve averaged the percentage of the population of each state that’s received a first or single dose vaccine to date.
- The average of states that Donald Trump won: 30%
- The average of states that Joe Biden won: 33%
That’s a staggering difference. States Biden won, adjusted for population, have received 10% more vaccines than states he didn’t win. A 1% variance on a large scale is considered statistically significant. A ten percent variance, with something as important as COVID-19 vaccines no less, would seemingly suggest there’s more at play. To date Florida has received vaccine doses covering only 30% of our state’s population – the most demographically vulnerable in the nation, while New York has received 34% and California – a state far larger than ours – has received 34%. How does that happen if not by design? I have no hard evidence that the Biden administration is purposely allocating vaccines based on how they voted in 2020, but it’d have to be a coincidence that’s literally ten times larger than what’s statistically significant for it to be anything else.
Photo Credit: Getty Images