Killing Voters
Summary for the time-constrained reader: Excuses don’t keep people alive. They just shorten the voting rolls. We’ve gone backward since free COVID shots and free test kits. Now you need a doctor’s visit, a bill, and often a fight you can’t afford. Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—with a felony heroin possession record and brain damage from parasites—now controls health policy while measles surges back from the dead. Florida, Idaho, West Virginia, Mississippi are rolling back protections. Blue states scramble to hold the line. The result: fewer vaccines, higher hospital bills, more dead Americans. I can pay because I have expensive insurance. Most voters in red counties can’t. Trump’s strange war on his own base continues.
I went to Walgreens on Thursday for a COVID booster. Same pharmacy where I used to walk in, get jabbed, walk out. Free. Simple. American efficiency at its accidental best.
That was yesterday.
Today, "You need a prescription," the pharmacist said. "And insurance approval. That'll be $180 without coverage."
$180 for a shot that used to cost nothing and a doctor's bill too. I can afford it. I have very expensive insurance. Most people in red counties can’t.
The Kill Chain
Rural counties vote Republican. Rural counties have the lowest vaccination rates. Rural counties have the fewest hospitals. When preventable diseases hit unvaccinated communities, the bodies pile up predictably.
Mississippi leads the nation in preventable deaths. Hasn't voted Democratic since Carter. Idaho's measles outbreaks hit communities where Trump won by massive margins. West Virginia keeps electing politicians who gut health programs, then wonder why people die at home because they can't afford ambulances.
Medical debt in rural America has exploded. Families choose between insulin and keeping the lights on. Between cancer treatment and the mortgage. The smart ones declare bankruptcy fast. The others die quietly, in debt, alone.
I've fought insurance companies. Paid bills that made no sense. Watched procedures get denied while people suffered. The system was broken before Trump. Now it's weaponized.
Every preventable death in a red county is one less Trump vote. Every medical bankruptcy is a family too broken to vote. It's voter suppression by public health policy.
The Counterarguments
There are reasons people give for refusing vaccines or doubting public health. They deserve to be heard in full, not as straw men.
Vaccines have side effects. True. No drug is risk-free. A sore arm, fever, even rare complications. People worry about what they put in their bodies.
COVID hit the cities first. Also true. In 2020, density turned subways and high-rises into petri dishes. Rural areas looked safer by comparison.
Rural life is healthier. Fewer crowds, more space, cleaner air. It felt like protection.
Medical freedom. A powerful American instinct. The right to say no, the right to decide for yourself.
All of that has weight. And yet—none of it holds up against the numbers. Rural deaths surpassed urban by 2021. Side effects are vanishingly rare compared to the millions killed by the virus. “Natural health” collapses once the infection arrives. And “freedom” doesn’t protect your neighbor’s lungs.
The counterarguments sound reasonable. The outcomes are lethal. Excuses don’t keep people alive. They just shorten the voting rolls.
The Count
Rural hospitals are closing. Vaccination rates in deep red areas run 30 points lower than blue cities. Medical bankruptcies cluster in Republican strongholds where people can't afford the doctor visits RFK Jr. now requires.
Over the past two decades, 193 rural hospitals have shut down—62 of them in just the last seven years. Nearly half of all rural hospitals lose money each year. Today, 46% operate in the red, and 432 are at risk of closure. Primary care visits average $259 in reimbursement—barely enough to keep doors open, much less keep doctors in town.
I walked out of Walgreens to see a doctor and get a prescription. Because my expensive insurance will cover it. Because I live where doctors exist. In red counties, people die waiting for care that never comes.
Republican policies kill Republican voters. The math is simple. The morgues are full. The voting rolls are shorter.
Brain worms have colonized the cabinet. The man who literally had parasites eating his thoughts now gets to eat ours.
Patients die while he decides vaccines cause autism and raw milk cures cancer. The irony writes itself—a diseased mind diagnosing a diseased nation.
We'd laugh if the morgues weren't filling up.
This is what happens when conspiracy theories get security clearances. The worms won.
Excuses don't keep people alive. They just thin the voting rolls. When hospitals close, democracy dies with them. Republicans are at war with their own voters.
