The republican stronghold of Texas has one of the lowest covid deaths per capita in the United States, better than even California (which is doing relatively well). Deaths per capita at 16/million is lower than almost anywhere in Western Europe.
It's not obvious to me at all you can make a political judgement from covid19.
California was hit early but acted very quickly and effectively. They're also pretty wealthy so they could get equipment and supplies before there was really a rush.
Texas and Virginia had the benefit of getting hit when most people were taking this seriously (i.e. they didn't want to become NYC). You also have to consider public transportation use which is way higher in places like Seattle and Chicago than it is in Dallas, Houston, etc.
So again it's mostly about exposure: density, travelers, being in contact with travelers, being in contact with people who've been in contact with travelers, etc. How quickly shelter in place was ordered (getting a testing system set up would also have worked but you have to act even faster and spend upfront money, which of course we were never going to do) has a direct effect in exposure. And then it's all about how well you get supplies to treat the infected.
So, if we were to to scale Texas' to Germany's "3x population", Germany could still handle that in a week. The implication stands.
> 2. Maybe they haven't broken 200k tests because there isn't an obvious population to test when you've had an order of magnitude fewer covid deaths?
No, it's that they're willing to die for Whataburger. There's nothing else that would tangibly explain a complete refusal by the 9th largest economy in the world to attempt to protect itself.
It's not obvious to me at all you can make a political judgement from covid19.