That quiz is really bad. Sure, let's compare Iowa and Michigan (spoiler, those are the two states in the first question) when they have different demographics,

That quiz is really bad. Sure, let's compare Iowa and Michigan (spoiler, those are the two states in the first question) when they have different demographics, different population densities, just completely different situations. You don't compare a death line from Iowa with a death line from Michigan, and conclude Iowa is "better" than Michigan just because it has a lower death rate at one point in time. You compare a single state to what it might have been had the restrictions been better or worse. You look at counterfactuals. And you can do that with science and data. So yes, you can take a region like, say, NYC, which had horrible lines in the beginning of the pandemic, and still conclude that it would have been far worse if not for the mitigation efforts it put in place. And you can look at other regions with lower population density, or populations that weren't well-tracked, regions with better death numbers than someplace like NY, and still conclude that they completely mismanaged the situation compared to what the numbers could have been. To just take two death lines from two different areas with completely different on-the-ground realities is just cherry-picking - at best motivated reasoning and at worst dishonest intent. Besides all that, even examining the numbers in the way the quiz wants to - but with current numbers, numbers that extend past the arbitrary cutoff point in those graphs - they show that Iowa currently has a worse Rt than Michigan, worse test positivity, disease prevalence that is almost twice as bad as Michigan, and checking today's data, Iowa's deaths per million are actually worse than Michigan's. (https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/public-health/us-coronavirus-deaths-by-state-july-1.html https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/public-health/us-coron...) In a state with less than 1/3 the population density. Throughout this thread you're also using absolutist language and exaggeration in ways that are literally untrue. You're demanding proof and then rejecting proof when it's presented. Really straining the boundaries of the "assume good faith" rule we follow on this site.