Blame the Density

The New York Times has become anathema among conservatives, with good reason for the most part. On the other hand, Lucianne.com links to a NYT article which I found echoed at the Seattle Times (requires no registration) which takes the Miles Law approach COTTonLINE has favored.

The staggering American death toll from the coronavirus, now approaching 100,000, has touched every part of the country, but the losses have been especially acute along its coasts, in its major cities, across the industrial Midwest, and in New York City.

The devastation, in other words, has been disproportionately felt in blue America, which helps explain why people on opposing sides of a partisan divide that has intensified in the past two decades are thinking about the virus differently. It is not just that Democrats and Republicans disagree on how to reopen businesses, schools and the country as a whole. Beyond perception, beyond ideology, there are starkly different realities for red and blue America right now.

Counties won by President Donald Trump in 2016 have reported just 27% of the virus infections and 21% of the deaths — even though 45% of Americans live in these communities.

Part of the answer is population density. Nearly a third of Americans live in one of the 100 most densely populated counties in the United States — urban communities and adjacent suburbs — and it is there that the virus has taken its greatest toll, with an infection rate three times as high as in the rest of the nation and a death rate four times as high.

Overall, the infection rate is 1.7 times as high in the most urban areas of the country compared with nearby suburbs, and 2.3 times as high in the suburbs as in exurban and rural areas.

Miles Law: where you sit determines where you stand. Example: where you live determines your experience with, and attitude toward, Covid-19.

COTTonLINE concludes: Urban living is also bad for your mental health.