+ a million. Why not do total cases since the beginning of the pandemic (hint, it won't give him the data he is looking for)
First of all, though it's not nearly as compelling when looking at cumulative since the beginning, the trend is definitely still there. And obviously there's cherry picking going on here, but the reason not to start from the beginning is not completely without merit. The states that were hit hardest early on had the least opportunity to do anything about it, while the states that were okay in the beginning and hard hit later in the year had much more to go off of in combatting the virus. I think the red/blue angle is still pretty silly and not as supported by the data as they're making it out to be, but it seems likely that a closer analysis of different responses in different states will in fact show what worked well and what didn't.
More so, despite the cherry picked timeline perfectly aligning with Florida’s first wave, they are near the bottom of deaths. And if the implication is that red states are less safe because restrictions lead to fewer deaths, Florida should be a glaring example that this assumption is false.
Florida is actually smack in the middle for deaths per capita going back to the beginning of the pandemic, so in fact the cherry picking you're referring to has the opposite effect that you're accusing them of.