Watching an ad in which former President Donald Trump promoted Covid-19 vaccines was linked to increased vaccinations in US counties with low immunization rates, according to a new study. The study was released Monday as a working paper in the National Bureau of Economic Research that has not yet been peer-reviewed.
… Marc Hetherington, an author of the study and professor of political science at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, was conducting surveys to assess people’s attitudes towards the pandemic when it first hit the US in 2020.
“What we started to realize at that point is this is turning into a highly politicized pandemic of all things,” he said. “Public health people are probably not used to coming up with solutions to health problems that are politicized.”
(The story was also covered by Bloomberg, The New York Times, Science magazine and others.)