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COVID vaccination, for all the slowdown, remains fast moving across the United States. It seems likely we’ll see a brief surge in shots as parents bring their 12-15 year olds in for their shots. But we’re already seeing the emergence of what in the later months of 2021 is like to be two separate Americas as defined by COVID.
This is a map from the CDC vaccine data portal.
Click here and scroll down to see an interactive version the map.
It shows doses per 100k residents. Precisely how this factors out in vaccinated people is a touch blurry since the great majority of vaccinations are two-shot course. States range from just over 50,000 to just over 100,000 doses per resident.
What jumps out first is how tightly the vaccination data maps to the country’s political geography. It’s not a perfect match. Generally Democratic Nevada is relatively low at ~73k doses per 100k and the Dakotas are better vaccinated than similarly Republican states. But by and large the line is pretty complete.
We shouldn’t assume this is all politicized vaccine resistance. Deep South states generally have poorer health in general than other parts of the country. So some of it is likely more tenuous public health infrastructure. But it seems clear that the driving factor is ideology and partisan identity.
Alabama and Mississippi both have under 60k doses per 100k residents. If you look across the rest of that Deep South swath of states only the Carolinas are significantly about ~65k. The difference between Georgia at 65,973 doses and Pennsylvania at 88,758 or New York at 90,637 isn’t that vast. It could be made up pretty quickly if Georgia picked up the pace. The real question is whether these Southern tier states and the group in the Intermountain West have already hit a wall of vaccine resistance.
