I appreciate the effort you're putting in to this and it's a shame you're getting downvoted this heavily. I would want to see a very careful treatment of this

I appreciate the effort you're putting in to this and it's a shame you're getting downvoted this heavily. I would want to see a very careful treatment of this data before I could be convinced that temperature is a greater factor in transmission rates than stay-at-home policies or population density. It would be really easy to cherry-pick examples. A couple of counter-examples that come immediately to mind are Chicago and Florida. Chicago's climate should fit your model but they have about 1/3rd the cases per capita vs New York City. Florida meanwhile should be warm enough to be outside of your "Covid Belt", but cases there are expanding extremely rapidly and it's likely to overtake Washington state in per capita cases and deaths. Louisiana similarly has one of the highest per capita death rates in the nation. Climate might be one factor, but it's not clear that it's a big factor, let alone the most important one.