The fourth wave of the pandemic over the summer, fueled by the Delta variant, saw some U.S. states experience their highest rates of COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths ever.
Health officials - and others in the mainstream media - have said unvaccinated people were responsible for the surge.
Some in the mainstream media, such as CNN White House reporter Stephen Collinson in an article published on Tuesday, blamed conservatives in particular.
But are red state residents really to blame? The short answer: Yes, but not entirely.
Republicans have been much less likely than Democrats to get vaccinated with the gap only widening as the pandemic has gone on.
They are not the only group with stagnating vaccination rates, however.
Black Americans have been consistently less likely than whites to receive COVID-19 shots and Caucasians have had higher rates than African-Americans in most states reporting breakdown by race/ethnicity.
Several mainstream media outlets have recently said unvaccinated conservatives were responsible for the Delta surge over the summer (above), but a DailyMail.com analysis find that's not entirely the case
Republicans have been less likely to get vaccinated against Covid at 56% compared 92% of Democrats, and are more likely to say they never plan to get shots
But vaccination rates among black Americans have lagged behind white Americans, CDC data show, with 33% of black Americans (orange line) fully vaccinated compared to 40.4% of whites (purple line)
In his article, Collinson said conservatives are the group most averse to getting the shot, which led to the fourth wave.
'Rising gasoline prices and inflation, a global supply chain backup that could empty Santa's sled, and a pandemic Biden was elected to end but that won't go away dominate a testing political environment,' he wrote.
'The economy seems to have forgotten how to get people back to work.
'That's largely due to a summer COVID-19 surge powered mostly by conservatives who refuse to get vaccines and who view masking and mandates as an act of government oppression.'
Collinson's analysis is not entirely unfounded, with data showing a clear divide in vaccination rates along party lines.
According to a report released last month from the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF), as of mid-September, about 53 percent of people in U.S. counties who voted for Biden are fully vaccinated compared to 40 percent of counties that voted for Trump.
This gap has widened dramatically since April, when 23 percent of people in Biden counties were fully vaccinated compared to 21 percent of Trump counties.
What's more, a Gallup poll published two weeks ago found 92 percent of those who identify as Democrats have gotten at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine compared with 56 percent of Republicans.
What's more, about a quarter of Republicans say they will 'probably' or 'definitely' not get vaccinated.
This makes them the most vaccine-hesitant group in the country.
A total of 53% of people in U.S. counties who voted for Biden (blue line) are fully vaccinated compared to 40% of counties that voted for Trump (red line)
Their opposition is despite former President Donald Trump getting vaccinated against Covid and encouraging his supporters to do so as well.
'I would recommend it to a lot of people that don't want to get it. And a lot of those people voted for me, frankly,' he said
