Age corrected data for overall covid deaths:
1 Mississippi 347 355 2 Texas 261 312 3 Alabama 315 310 4 Oklahoma 288 295 5 Louisiana 282 293 6 Tennessee 283 286 7 New Jersey 295 284 7 New York 299 284 9 Arkansas 284 275 9 Nevada 260 275 11 Georgia 240 274 12 District of Columbia 226 267 13 South Carolina 263 256 13 North Dakota 267 256 15 Kentucky 247 250 16 Arizona 262 249 16 Indiana 244 249 18 South Dakota 262 246 19 Rhode Island 269 238 20 Missouri 245 234
Of the 20 worst states, 16 fall into the “mask optional, vaccine optional, reopen early” camp.
Three of the other four are East coast states which got infected early and returned known covid patients to nursing homes.
When you adjust for age it looks an awful lot like a ranking by BMI.