how the republican crusade on modern medicine is slowly killing them
It used to be crunchy vegan moms who disdained modern medical science. Now, it's MAGA diehards who are at war with their doctors to their own detriment.
Back in the good old days when I just started blogging, there was a well established stereotype of who was going to show up in the comments to lament that vaccines are poison, how ancient wisdom was all we needed for a healthy life, and how their perfect little "indigo children" were just too evolved for today's medicine. It was not exactly a conservative audience to put it mildly. If anything, they were a verbal punching bag for the traditionally conservative and right-leaning demographics.
Now, fast forward to today and the ascension of RFK Jr. from a hero of suburban wine moms inspired by Oprah and Jenny McCarthy not to vaccinate their kids, to the right's cudgel against modern medicine. To be fair, there has long been a crossover of right wing conspiracy theorists and left wing anti-vaccine hardliners since both usually share a downright unhealthy distrust of institutions of any sort, so COVID, with its conspiracy mongering and its ripple effects, created a vicious hybrid of wellness and reactionary right wing politics with paranoia and unfocused anger as the glue.
With MAGA-fied Republicans also utterly and irreversibly convinced that every major institution except Trump and his inner circle are against them, their anger and mistrust have metastasized to the point where they refuse to give live-saving vitamin K shots to their newborns and try to organize a defiant resistance against the WHO and a new hantavirus pandemic, even though the agency kept saying they see no need to worry about the spread of the virus, had it under control, and that there were no plans to recommend, much less require, any special measures like masks or vaccinations.
And this default rage at anyone who isn't their favorite wellness guru hawking their soon to expire ivermectin, or anointed by pro-Trump podcast bros as an acceptable source of medical information for the past six years, is starting to add up to a growing death toll, literally. A new study shows that since the 2010s, the health outcomes of more moderate and left-leaning Americans and their MAGA counterparts have notably diverged, and not for the better.
Of course, there's some nuance there. Generally speaking, being more right wing and having less formal education always tended to be correlated to shorter life expectancy. Race, occupation, and income also play a significant role. You just tend to make more with more formal education, have more access to care, and are more comfortable with hypothetical situations and shades of gray, which means you tend to vote for policies more associated with the left and tend to better follow your doctors' advice when it comes to preventative care.
Being more right wing but also having a college degree, great pay, and access to good care also means you can expect to live longer and be healthier, but not if you refuse to take your doctors' advice on principle alone. If you think you can cure cancer with gym time, smoothies, and supplements, and that vaccines have 5G mind control nanotech after spending way too much time on what used to be Twitter, or listening to four hour long manosphere podcasts, there's not much today's medical science can do for you. Hence, the study in question.
When comparing life expectancy and health data of Democratic and Republican leaning populations, researchers found differences that can no longer be fully explained by the typical factors like education, lifestyle, race, and income. But if you start factoring things like vaccine refusal during COVID and just not going to their doctors with ticking time bombs in their bodies, convinced they'll be lied to because X influencers, podcast bros, and RFK Jr. said so, the data starts making a little more sense.
Ironically, in their supposed quest to tackle chronic disease and clean up all the toxins poisoning us for decades now, they've ended up doing the exact opposite and laying the groundwork for more lifelong illness, sudden death, and increased child mortality. Given the current trends and trajectory, MAHA adherents who think they're fighting back against the sinister globalist medical establishment of their nightmares, are going to live shorter lives and spend them sicker, weaker, and with more surprise deaths they will no doubt chalk up to their preferred bogeymen rather than their own choices.
See: Elder, E., O’Brian, N.A. (2026) The political polarization of health outcomes in the USA. Nat Hum Behav, DOI: 10.1038/s41562-026-02474-9
