Florida didn't lock down (EDIT: except a few weeks at the beginning), and their death numbers are middle-of-the-pack[1], just marginally worse than California, which did heavy lockdowns.
We should probably assume that, in addition to not following some practices we should have, we also did a lot that we didn't have to.
This or that state government's mandate or lack thereof really can't stand in for actual behaviors.
For one thing, regardless of state mandates, you can bet your buttons that a huge number of residential/nursing facilities for seniors in Florida did lock down, and thereby protected those most likely to increase Florida's numbers.
If you want to see the effects of policy, don't compare states (especially big diverse ones like California). Compare, for example, San Francisco (with peak 7-day-average new cases of 363, total cases 36.7k, and population of 874k) and Miami (peak 7-day-average new cases of 3240, total cases 494k, and population of 2710k). Per capita, Miami was about four times worse.
California is huge and had numerous places actively(purposefully) flout public health measures like quarantine, lockdowns and restrictions on gatherings. It's hard to compare the two.
The post I responded to said "imagine if nobody did anything". I gave Florida as an example. Saying that California also flouted restrictions does not really refute that.
We should probably assume that, in addition to not following some practices we should have, we also did a lot that we didn't have to.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/covid-cases.html list the states by "of all time" and "deaths" which shows FL with 168 deaths per 100k and CA with 159, only two slots apart.