Red State Covid Denial

I believe that there is, most likely, very serious under-reporting about the number of deaths from Covid-19 in red states. The first example of glaring ignorance about Covid-19 was my 12 year old niece. She was laid up for several weeks in June with a full body rash that included a very swollen tongue. She was taken to the ER for treatment twice at Methodist Hospital but was never tested for Covid-19. I asked if they were going to get her tested and mentioned that rash was a symptom of Covid-19. Apparently, her insurance would not pay for treatment so a test was never done.

In the second example, it seemed that Republican members of my family were going out of their way to deny that Covid-19 is a threat. Last night at my 59 year old cousin's funeral, I mentioned that I was in shock and had no idea that he had been seriously ill. The family repeatedly said that he died of natural causes. However, the story I got from another cousin, who is a respiratory therapist at the Hospital he was in, said he had had been hospitalized for Covid-19 last month and was on oxygen for a while. He got better and returned to work, when he suddenly died.

Is anyone else in Red States seeing this kind of orchestrated denial of reality?