COVID facts from Nate Silver - which states fared better or worse?

https://www.natesilver.net/p/the-2-key-facts-about-us-covid-policy

The facts are these:
- Until vaccines became available, there was little difference in COVID death rates between blue states and red states.

- After vaccines became available, there were clear differences, with red states having higher death rates, almost certainly as a result of lower vaccine uptake among Republicans.

In other words, the vaccines made a real and obvious dent in COVID, whereas the effect of other NPIs — such as school and business closures, masks, and social distancing — is much less clear.
You can observe this by looking at state-level data.

The table below compares the number of COVID deaths per capita up through Feb. 1, 2021 with the number of deaths since then; this date represents roughly when vaccines became readily available to the most vulnerable groups.



Up through February 2021, there was little discernible pattern in whether red states or blue states
were worse affected by COVID. Since then — post-vaccines — the top of the list is dominated by red states. It’s a big difference; since Feb. 2021, the average death rate in red states is 35 percent higher than in blue states. The state with the highest COVID death rate during that period is West Virginia, which gave Donald Trump his second-largest margin of victory. The jurisdiction with the lowest COVID death rate since Feb. 2021 is Washington, D.C., which gave Joe Biden his largest winning margin. There are some exceptions to the pattern — Utah did quite well, for instance — but not many.