evidence: This summer, viral misinformation claimed that the Amish did not vaccinate against COVID-19 and, as a result, had a death rate 90 times lower than the rest of the United States. Now, a Penn State study is the first to provide geographically broad and population-wide evidence that while the Amish-populated counties across the nation tend to have lower vaccination rates than other populations, they are not entirely unvaccinated. [...] They found that Amish populated counties had an approximately 1.6% lower COVID-19 vaccination rate than counties without significant Amish populations. Given that only three counties had an Amish population of more than 20%, this rate is notable, the researchers said. The results suggest that higher percentages of Amish in a county significantly decrease the county-level vaccination rate while controlling for other covariates expected to also predict lower vaccination rates, such as political ideology, rural/non-rural status, household income and evangelical Protestant affiliation. [...] Anderson, who is part of the Amish community, said he saw at the beginning of the pandemic the Amish were side-stepping many preventative measures and hypothesized COVID-19 vaccination rates would be lower than the rest of the population. However, widely circulated commentary that no Amish were vaccinated were unsubstantiated.