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Comment by nathanlied | Hacker News Reader

Sweden also has a fairly low population density outside its larger cities, as well as a relatively small (10M) population. And its measures aren't without criticism - consider they have 100 deaths per 1M people, which places them 10th on countries with over 1K cases.

There's states in the US with similar densities; I'd imagine those would be spared most of the deaths, even if stricter measures weren't implemented, but what about the coasts?

Honestly, the US, large and heterogenous as it is, should implement different measures per state. It's obvious to me that what works for some places may not work for others so well.

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Even if you look at Germany, you will see huge regional differences. If you look at the map of the positive tested, you can clearly see spikes in the huge cities (Berlin, Hamburg, München) and in densely populated regions. You can also still see that the infection density is higher around the places of initial infections (Bavaria for example, many skiing tourists who got infected in Austria/Italy). On the other side, there are less dense populated regions with a noticeably smaller infection rate.

And interestingly, those on holiday seem to have brought it back at a much greater rate than business travelers. E.g. Frankfurt isn't an epicenter despite having the largest airport and a lot of business travel, esp. to China. Many of the early outbreaks can be traced back to either Italy or Austria during Easter holidays. And that's where centers of infection remain.

It's still early enough in the pandemic that the effect you're seeing here might only be that denser areas get it first, not that they get it worse. People in less dense areas do still regularly come in close contact with other people, so there is the potential for the virus to spread there even if the people live spread out on farms or whatever.

Given it a few more months and I suspect that the differences between the urbs and suburbs will be less.

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