The Lancet published a study comparing the COVID infection rate and death rate in the 50 states. It concluded that “SARS-CoV-2 infections and COVID-19 deaths disproportionately clustered in U.S. states with lower mean years of education, higher poverty rates, limited access to quality health care, and less interpersonal trust — the trust that people report having in one another.” These sociological factors appear to have made a bigger difference than lockdowns (which were “associated with a statistically significant and meaningfully large reduction in the cumulative infection rate, but not the cumulative death rate”).

The states with less education and higher poverty rates, etc. were more likely to be red states that opened up sooner, so lockdowns likewise corresponded to fewer infections and fewer deaths.

Look at Alabama and Oregon. Similar population sizes. Alabama opened up earlier and had about three times as many infections and deaths (or more).