I think the issue is that some states had governors who were more willing to go to "drastic lockdown measures" and keep them there longer than other states did. In the absence of a coordinated federal response, we got piecemeal policy all over the country. The northeast got clobbered early on, locked down, stayed mostly locked down, and slowly is reopening while other states seemed to say "hey look, the northeast is reopening so we should be able to reopen too since it never even got that bad here", but those states immediately blew past the safeguards in reopening that allowed for things to be phased reopening