A friend of mine is industrial engineer, specializes in hydraulics for heavy agricultural machinery. He mostly works from home in a blue state, but he has to go for work trips around the country, obviously in deep red states. In the past 6 months he had to travel to North Dakota, Kansas, and either Mississippi or Missouri (can't recall which one). His first hand account is that no one bothers to wear masks over there, people don't care about social distancing, they just walk over to shake hands, practically hugging, the bars are packed with people without masks of course, not a single worry in the world. Is it any surprise it's spreading like wildfire in the red states?
On the other hand over here in a blue state several counties hit 10% positivity rate after opening outdoor and "limited indoor" dining, and schools 6 weeks ago.
Bottom line, careless stupidity and complete disregard for the personal safety of others egged on by the president and GOP as well as dumb social policy is what's driving this spike and it's only going to get worse as it gets colder and people will be "forced" to socialize indoors.
Maybe in areas like New York (or London) that had strong international links so got hit hard early, learned the lesson? People in those places already know someone who got it or died of it, so are inclined to be more careful, whereas places that only got it later haven't yet taken in how bad it can get?