COVID-19 Side Effect Reports Mirror Red-Blue State Divide, Study Finds

People in Republican-voting states were more likely to report adverse events after receiving a COVID-19 vaccination than people living in Democratic-leaning states, a new analysis in JAMA Network Open finds, suggesting that how people view their post-vaccine side effects or decide whether to report them may be shaped by their political views.

More people died of COVID-19 in states where more voters registered as Republicans and voted that way. “The anti-vaccine movement might have started out along libertarian lines like, ‘Let’s not have compulsory vaccination,’ but it gradually moved into thinking that either the vaccines weren’t effective or that they were unsafe,” study author David Asch told STAT’s Elizabeth Cooney. Read the full article from STAT here.