Cases of the novel coronavirus doubled in the state of Wisconsin last week.

They're rising in Florida, Texas, Ohio and the Dakotas.

Back in the spring, the densely populated cities of the North, East and West Coast were hit hardest and responded with strident lock down measures.

Other states followed.

But by Memorial Day, many Midwestern and Southern states lifted restrictions and saw no immediate uptick in virus cases.

The Republican president even crowed that the coronavirus was a democratic blue state problem and urged those areas to restore economic activity.

If you take the blue states at where, uh, at a level that I don't think anybody in the world would be at, we're really at a very low level.

But some of the states, uh, they were blue states and blue state management, by the way we recommend they open up their states.

I think it's very important that they open up their states.

Several Republican led states follow the president in bucking mitigation measures.

But by mid summer outbreaks spread in the South before moving this fall into the upper Midwest, and now it is squarely a Trump country issue.

Trump argues that case numbers are inflated by the growth of testing, but these so called Trump states have also closed the gap when it comes to deaths.

By October, these states eclipsed the rest of the country in Total Co vid 19 deaths, and the number of fatalities continues to grow faster in those areas, with a week to go before election Day.