Study: Governor’s party affiliation may have influenced how bad their state’s COVID crisis was

They re speculating that blue states got it worse up front because they re coastal. People traveling to China, Italy, and other hot spots were more likely to re-enter the U.S. in those coastal states, seeding outbreaks. Blue states also tend to have higher incomes per capita than red ones do; wealthier people are doubtless more likely to travel abroad, so blue states also may have had more residents bringing back the virus in early 2020. Once May and June rolled around, though, the partisan trends began to shift possibly because red-state governors moved quickly to relax social-distancing restrictions and eschewed mask mandates for awhile. Here s how cases per capita across different states looked like last year, per the study:

via hotair.com

Sounds plausible.