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Comment by austincheney | Hacker News Reader

I like how they made an example of Texas where I live. My observation is that people in urban areas aren’t take this seriously from their frequent visits to stores for shopping, lack of face masks, eagerness for normalcy and so forth. The risk of exposure is multiplicative of population density. Counter-intuitively the lower risk rural areas appear to be taking this far more seriously.

It seems impatience will get the best of us. The only way to beat this is with very strict exercising of social distancing for not less than three months, healthy habits, and extreme sanitation. It seems urban areas are not willing to wait 3 months until there is an uncontrolled outbreak.

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Flu hits rural areas hardest, but hits them later than it hits cities. I wouldn’t make quick assumptions this early on.

This may be different, as people don’t take flu as seriously. But America is already loosening up. You also can’t see stuff as clearly in rural areas. The big risks are indoor gatherings at private homes, church, work, and school.

If you aren’t doing those things, you won’t see them happening. Whereas it’s easy to see people walking on an urban street as you drive by, or to watch the news going to a central urban location.

You see this with crime rates. People assume it’s a big city issue due to visibility, but crime rates tend to be higher in rural areas.

Coronavirus may well require urban density, but don’t be too quick to assume it as an axiom.

https://www.ajc.com/news/state--regional/flu-hits-rural-geor...

Vaccination rates vary by location. https://www.cdc.gov/ruralhealth/vaccines/index.html

COVID-19 lacks a vaccine, making the flu comparison problematic.

That data isn’t about flu. Got anything specific about flu vaccination rates in urban vs. rural areas? The HPV vaccine in particularly is an issue in the culture wars.

That said you’re likely correct. I found this from cdc, with rates by state. At a glance, rural states have lower rates: https://www.cdc.gov/flu/fluvaxview/coverage-1819estimates.ht...

However, this gap could also be due to health system efficacy in general. So unclear if we might expect worse covid results in places with fewer/worse hospitals.

This says rural areas have lower influenza vaccination rates: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264410X1...

For underlying data you may need to look at BRFSS.

What is this based on? Most urban centers were the first places to shut down and first to require masks. From my family in Iowa, they seem to be taking far less precautions than what I’ve seen in Chicago. Iowa never even had a stay-at-home order.

In places that have opened back up, it isn’t being driven by the urban areas. Georgia and Florida aren’t opened because Atlanta and Miami forced the Governor’s hand. Do you think most of these protesters we’ve seen are from cities or outside?

Based just upon my unscientific observations and people I talk to. I see most people at my urban grocers without masks and hear from family and neighbors go to the store ever other day.

When I drove to my mothers house in rural area recently there were few people in the grocery store there and most were wearing masks. A few days later I drove to Fort Hood for a military deployment and again everybody in this tiny town of Gatesville were wearing masks in the store and really taking distancing seriously in the store.

That’s the exact opposite of what I’m hearing in Illinois. Stores in the city are strictly enforcing the mask policy (I’ve seen multiple people denied entry), the suburbs are a little less strict and the rural areas even less so.

Edit: Wanted to add that the legislatures suing the Governor over his stay-at-home order are from rural parts of the state. https://www.dailyherald.com/news/20200429/gop-legislators-qu...

I got the heck out the SF Bay Area to semi-rural NorCal, and have a good 12 months of food that would normally get eaten anyhow. Curiously, I frequently see drivers speeding down the street here with their vehicle windows down, no masks, and acting like there's no such thing as a virus. One of the adjacent properties is constructing a house and multiple neighbors have been chainsawing pines and oaks nonstop for the past month. In 3 months, I've only been off-property once for an emergency dental visit.

I don't think there is, or ever will be, sufficient testing evidence to justify similar-to-past public interaction until if or when there is a safe and effective vaccine deployed that covers all strains. The prevalence is basically unknown and will only be worse when there is no longer mindshare or patience to keep up the fight... I think nearly all of this socioeconomic pain will be for naught because of the endgame.

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