U.S. COVID-19 Vaccination Levels by County Over Time

Charles Gaba:

One thing I’ve been noting is that the R-squared (coefficient of determination) for the graphs at both the state & county levels seems to have been inching up higher over the past month or two … that is, the outlier counties seem to be gradually moving closer to the graph’s trend line.

Furthermore, the slope of the trend line seemed to be moving upwards as well over time. Both of these mean that not only is there a clear correlation between a county’s 2020 partisan lean and how quickly their residents are getting vaccinated, that correlation is only increasing over time.

I decided to check to see whether this was an anomaly (just a temporary thing) or not by going back to the county-level vaccination data all the way back to February 1st, 2021. At that point supplies of both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines were ramping up, but getting vaccinated was still limited mostly to senior citizens 65 and older in the United States.

The whole series of charts is telling, but the last one — the animated one that shows how the partisan divide is increasing over time — is startling. The vaccinated aren’t going to forget this.

★ Thursday, 12 August 2021