Here's an explanation. Being a republican requires a person to sacrifice common sense and scientific literacy.
Coming up with explanations is easy. Weighing evidence and forming sound conclusions is the hard part. When coastal, high-density cities with lots of international travelers were infected first, how much weight do you put on the fact that they tend to vote Democratic to explain the spread?
Exhibit A to defend my initial point.
A reaction gif of a twenty-year-old semi-literate screed on tobacco legislation could just as well support the conclusion that politicians, not Republicans, are unscientific. The clumsy choice of wording (in a paragraph that conflicted with itself) cited statistics that were reasonably accurate at the time. Pence maintained that a third of smokers died of smoking-related illnesses, a figure that appeared to come from a 1987 study. Data demonstrating the percentage of smokers who contract lung cancer were mixed, but some indicated the number was roughly ten to 15 percent.