DOES HOW a city or town votes for president help predict whether that municipality will be at high-risk for COVID-19?

 That’s what one of our readers suggested last week after the release of the state’s report breaking communities down into four COVID categories – red for high-risk, yellow for moderate risk, and green and gray for minimal risk. He looked over the list of 97 communities designated red and saw a high proportion that either voted for President Trump on November 3 or turned out in force for him.

 “The GOP and Trump supporters apparently are the spreaders,” he said in an email. “This fact of personal politics aligning with COVID infections is not surprising, given POTUS’s active disparagement about wearing face coverings, gathering maskless in large non-family groups outdoors and indoors, having casual physical contact with others, etc.”

 It was an intriguing hypothesis, and we had to check it out.

 According to the secretary of state’s vote count, Joe Biden defeated Trump in Massachusetts by 33.5 points – 65.6 to 32.1 – with nearly 3.7 million votes cast.

 The state’s weekly COVID report identified 97 red communities last week. In those 97 communities, Biden’s margin of victory was only 15 points – 58-43. 

 Among the 137 yellow and the 117 green and gray communities, Biden’s margin of victory was 38 and 40 points, respectively.

 Trump won 20 of the 97 red communities, including Acushnet, Berkley, Blackstone, Charlton, Dighton, Douglas, Dracut, Freetown, Hampden, Leicester, Ludlow, Middleton, Monson, North Brookfield, Palmer, Rehoboth, Southwick, Spencer, Swansea, and West Bridgewater.

 He came close in a number of the other red communities. He lost Saugus by 458 votes and Sutton by just 10.

 Yet while the numbers show some correlation between high-risk COVID areas and Trump support, the connection seems tenuous. Many of the highest-risk areas in the state for COVID-19 – Lawrence, Chelsea, Brockton, and Lynn – backed Biden overwhelmingly. 

 A significant amount of research indicates the socioeconomic, demographic, and health characteristics of a community’s population have a great deal to do with the prevalence of COVID-19 infections. Adjusting for those factors and then trying to assess the impact of political differences on COVID-19 wouldn’t be easy, in part because there are so many variables. But that would probably be the only way to provide a real test of the vote-preference-COVID hypothesis.

 In a recent CommonWealth op-ed, Garrett Dash Nelson, the curator of maps and director of geographic scholarship at the Norman B. Leventhal Map and Education Center at the Boston Public Library, said the whole notion of looking at COVID through a municipal lens is problematic.

“It’s a problem about how we define the geographic area of responsibility of a public health crisis,” Nelson said. “The bankers and lawyers who live in low-risk Wellesley have their takeout meals brought to them by drivers who live in high-risk Framingham and send their children to daycare centers staffed by residents of high-risk Brockton. Yet when these service employees get sick, it isn’t the well-resourced health department of Wellesley that tallies them towards its case count or shoulders the burden of ensuring that the infected patients are staying at home. Instead, it’s Framingham and Brockton that have to do these things, and it is these towns that will be ordered to reverse their reopening plans, that will have to close down their schools, and that will begin to fret about the stresses on fragile municipal budgets.”

BRUCE MOHL

 

FROM COMMONWEALTH

The MBTA is preparing to roll back some of its proposed service cuts, with a focus on cutting — not eliminating — service. Hull, which stood to lose all MBTA service, is likely to get some back.

Gov. Charlie Baker begins to address COVID-19 “testing deserts”and places limits on elective hospital procedures to keep hospital beds available.

Sixty-three MBTA employees have COVID-19, and the T responds by slightly lengthening headways on most of the subway lines to free up workers who can fill in when others are out sick.

Opinion: Fourteen municipal officials, including Somerville Mayor Joe Curtatone, urge Gov. Charlie Baker to implement targeted, temporary rollbacks of the state’s reopening plan. … William Kilmartin calls for a constitutional amendment to do away with the “dark money” unleashed by the Citizens United court decision.

FROM AROUND THE WEB

 

MUNICIPAL MATTERS  

Former Fall River mayor Jasiel Correia II’s chief of staff appears headed for a plea deal. (Herald News)

Residents of Boston’s Chinatown are not happy about a proposed large electronic billboard in their neighborhood. (Boston Herald) A 40-foot sinkhole opens up at Ronan Park in Dorchester. (Dorchester Reporter)

Boston city councilors will consider launching an effort to amend the city’s budget-writing process to give the council greater say over city spending now largely controlled by the mayor. (Boston Globe)

HEALTH/HEALTH CARE

The DCU Center field hospital has a patient lounge with televisions and space for games where COVID-19 patients can have some social interaction. (Telegram & Gazette)

Two coronavirus testing sites are opening this week on Cape Cod, one at the Barnstable County Fairgrounds in Falmouth and the other at the Cape Cod Melody Tent in Hyannis. (Cape Cod Times) 

Nearly 40 percent of the 415 adults in Massachusetts say they would be very or somewhat unlikely to get the COVID-19 vaccine were it available today, according to a recent poll from the Western New England University Polling Institute. (GBH) Meanwhile, hospitals are preparing to receive and distribute the COVID-19 vaccine. (MassLive) Great Britain begins the world’s first mass inoculation effort against coronavirus, as residents begin receiving the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. (New York Times) The first person in the world to receive the approved Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine is a 90-year-old grandmother in London. (USA Today) An FDA analysis gives a big thumbs-up to the Pfizer vaccine. (NPR)

WASHINGTON/NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL

Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the Mass. General Hospital infectious diseases chief tapped by President-elect Biden to head the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is getting rave reviews from colleagues. (Boston Globe) Some caution that she faces a steep management learning curve, having never run a large operation like the CDC. (Washington Post)

Armed agents raided the home of a fired Florida data scientist and seized her computer and other records. The woman built the state’s COVID-19 dashboard and says she was fired when she refused to manipulate the data. She was in the process of building her own dashboard. (Tallahasee Democrat)

Incoming 4th Congressional District Rep. Jake Auchincloss sets up his priorities. (Wicked Local)

IMMIGRATION

In a letter to federal immigration officials, US Rep. Ayanna Pressley raises concerns about a speedup in the handling of immigration cases, many involving children.

ELECTIONS

An Amherst commission urges town officials to get the ball rolling on Beacon Hill now if the community wants to launch ranked-choice voting in time for the next election. (Daily Hampshire Gazette)

BUSINESS/ECONOMY

Criminals are targeting Massachusetts’ unemployment benefits program. The state has denied 187,000 applications for benefits because the applicants were ineligible and has recovered $242 million in fraudulent payments. (Eagle-Tribune)

EDUCATION

Boston will reopen 28 schools next week, allowing 1,700 high-needs students to return to classrooms. (Boston Globe) Students received failing grades in 6.5 percent of classes during the first term at Boston Latin Academy, one of the city’s three exam schools, up from 2.5 percent last year. (Boston Herald) 

MassLive looks at how Buxton School, a Williamstown boarding school, operated with no COVID-19 cases – and why it still decided to go remote after Thanksgiving. 

The state agrees to postpone or extend the time for students to take MCAS tests this year. (MassLive)

ARTS/CULTURE

The Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, which reopened in July, announces a second temporary closure amid rising COVID-19 cases. (Boston Globe)

ENERGY/ENVIRONMENT

State officials begin testing the indoor air quality of homes and businesses near the former Varian industrial site in Beverly due to concerns about contamination. (The Salem News)

CRIMINAL JUSTICE/COURTS

Evictions filings are shooting up following the end of the state moratorium on the proceedings. (Boston Globe)

Suspended Hampden Superior Court Assistant Clerk Daphne Moore appeals to the SJC to get back on the office’s payroll while she awaits trial on federal drug and money laundering charges. (MassLive)

MEDIA

Monica Richardson becomes the first black executive editor in the Miami Herald’s history. (Miami Herald)

On “The Tonight Show,” Jimmy Fallon makes fun of a song written by an Uxbridge therapist, which the man — an amateur musician — posted online but never meant to publicly release. (Telegram & Gazette)

PASSINGS

Chuck Yeager, the test pilot who broke the sound barrier, at 97. (New York Times)