Three Startling Findings from My Deep Dive into COVID’s Spread Across America

The coronavirus pandemic in the U.S. originated in the nation’s densely populated, left-leaning urban communities but spread to increasingly less dense suburban and then rural regions, where the politics tend to lean right. My detailed analysis of COVID data provides clear evidence of the striking shift in the infection’s political colors–and demonstrates that the migration from blue to red America was more extreme than would be implied by geography alone. Instead, politics and related social attitudes bear much of the blame for COVID’s greater and more deadly march through red America.

#1: COVID-19 infections were initially concentrated in Democratic-voting counties, but the share of infections in Republican counties now closely mirrors its underlying population share.

#2: Population Density Explains Part of the Partisan Split in COVID Cases. But We Must Also Blame Politics and Related Social Attitudes.

#3: COVID’s Charge Through Red American Has Been More Deadly

My revised deep dive is published on Medium.