There's a saying that believing is seeing. It's so much easier to see through the garbage that doesn't confirm your worldview than the garbage that does. Even Gregor Mendel made shit up. He just happened to be basically correct. But being correct about a conclusion, and being sound on the data from which that conclusion is derived sometimes aren't closely linked. The conclusion that conservative leaning areas in America could have done a better job with covid preparedness, given the disaster that was NY, NoLa, Detroit, etc, seems self-evident. But that doesn't mean that we should look for every opportunity to find another way to say, "Fuck Texas." I think part of the reason that the conservative areas got themselves into that mess was that they were too busy finding new ways to say, "Fuck NY and CA."