… As we wrestle with the new coronavirus, let’s learn lessons from the 2009-10 H1N1 swine flu outbreak in the United States. At first, polls back then showed that both Democrats and Republicans were about equally concerned with the outbreak. That makes sense: Why should our political party shape how we respond to a disease?
Yet because President Barack Obama was in the White House at the time, some conservatives started dismissing the swine flu as a hoax. … Matthew Baum of Harvard found that people in red states were indeed less likely to get vaccinated — and more likely to die of swine flu. CONT.
Nicholas Kristof, New York Times