Thread by @BillHanage

The changing political geography of the pandemic in the US. In the spring the densely populated deep blue NE was hit hard, but since July things have flipped and cases and deaths are now highest in rural GOP voting areas. Featuring work from us
washingtonpost.com/health/2020/10…

It also quotes @AliHMokdad who says, rightly "it didn’t show up immediately in rural communities,” he said. “And then people in these communities felt, ‘That’s not us, that’s the big cities.’ They let down their guard.” But there's something else here

the introductions to large urban areas are predictable, simply because of the numbers of opportunities, while for smaller rural communities it is more random. But given time the virus will get there eventually

Crowding also affects how sharp or 'peaked' epidemic curves are, as shown in this neat paper (from @MOUGK @EvolveDotZoo and others) nature.com/articles/s4159…

so look at this. It's per capita mortality up to 9/21 by county (data crunched by @_christiantesta). you can see that for some rural counties it's actually higher than in the early epicenter in the NE

(read the whole thing here btw cdn1.sph.harvard.edu/wp-content/upl…)

As time goes on, and if we do nothing to stop it, numbers will rise all over the map. That's why we work to stop it. Simple