We have taken the time to perform a simple analysis of COVID statistics and present graphs here. All data is available in this file.

States are ordered by Number of Confirmed Deaths with Number of Confirmed Cases included for reference.
States are ordered by highest case fatality rate. This can also be converted to a percentage by multiplying numbers by 100. For example Connecticut would be 9.16%.
This is the estimated death percentage compared to total population of the state. This can be converted to a percentage by multiplying numbers by 100. For example New York would be 0.167% of the total state population. It should be noted this is still a very large number of absolute deaths.
D-F-L is a wing of the Democratic Party. N/A is for the District of Columbia.
D-F-L is a wing of the Democratic Party. N/A is for the District of Columbia.
D-F-L is a wing of the Democratic Party. N/A is for the District of Columbia.
D-F-L is a wing of the Democratic Party. N/A is for the District of Columbia.
The relative news media mentions in health by state from March 2, 2020 to July 27, 2020.
The average relative news media mentions in health by states' governor's party from March 2, 2020 to July 27, 2020.
Comparison of relative health news media mentions to confirmed deaths.
Comparison of relative health news media mentions to case fatality rate.

Conclusions

There seems to be an abnormal focus on Florida, Arizona, Hawaii, and Texas though objectively they are performing decently in handling COVID-19. The next lowest performing states are New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts and California, though there is less media coverage around them. New York which has always been performing the worst is also mentioned frequently in health news trends which is no surprise.

News media mentions do not indicate positive or negative coverage. Additionally other national events such as the Floyd Killing may have disproportionately inflated Minnesota’s media numbers. However, this brief study shows that media mentions have little to do with the objective facts of the pandemic. News mentions were pulled specifically for Health related news coverage.

These mentions are not necessarily related to the pandemic, though it is likely that a large majority of them are. Reporting of statistics is never completely accurate. These numbers were drawn from best available data.

This study took about two hours to complete. Given the nature of today's fast moving, minimal attention span, internet landscape, it is up to individuals to do their due diligence in questioning their preferred media sources. In order to restore trust in media, individuals need to actively participate in critiquing their media choices. You can draw your own conclusions from these statistics. This is not meant to be a complete and expansive look into the pandemic.

Sources:

  1. COVID Statistics - Tracker
  2. CDC - Cases
  3. CDC - Deaths
  4. Google Trends