The 20 states with the highest recent COVID-19 death rates are Louisiana, Nevada, Arkansas, Florida, Mississippi, Missouri, Alabama, Kansas, Texas, Arizona, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Idaho, South Carolina, Georgia, Utah, Wyoming, Indiana, Kentucky and West Virginia.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/covid-cases.html

One of the reasons for that just resigned.

Density gives a great boost to infection rate.

Just because a state is red or blue, does not mean that everyone in that state is a democrat or republican. It's not binary.

And, in particular, with infectious disease a few bad apples spoil the bunch.

Can you tell us why the current delta deaths are pretty much entirely the unvaccinated? Care to take a stab at what the #1 predictor of vaccine status is? [1]

Also, maybe a shocker to you, but densely populated states (such as NJ, NY, and MA) tend to do poorly when a communicable disease hits. It spreads fast and the hospitals are overwhelmed.

[1] https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...