Living density doesn’t really matter. The virus spreads in indoor common areas like supermarkets, bars, restaurants, etc. These are just as dense in rural areas, maybe more due to lack of delivery.
To put it starkly, most of the death has been confined to nursing homes and most people don't see it. Most people don't know anyone who has died of COVID. It is not that deadly of a pandemic yet.
Surging cases isn't surging death. There has been a very small uptick in deaths as the virus spreads through the South, but not nearly as big as the surge in cases. Meaning more people are living through it.
It is easy to pretend things are normal and the only thing standing in the way of the unafraid people living normally are the scared people.
The scared people like to talk about all the unknowns. Who knows how many will have lasting damage? Who knows if you can get reinfected?
The not scared people are okay with the uncertainty. Every day you get into your car you could die in a car accident, you don't get torn up about the unknowns.
I've said this from the beginning, if this disease killed more people of prime age, the response would be very different.
But it is very hard to scare the confident, unafraid people into submission the way the virus spreads and kills right now.
Ha, I see the talking point has changed. Everybody was saying the increase in cases meant nothing because it was all due to testing and deaths weren't increasing.
Now it is a "very small uptick", meaning, for instance, about 300% in the last 3 weeks in Texas.[1]
Darn scared people, like the governor of Georgia, who is so scared of something that he's suing[2] Atlanta's mayor to prevent the city from requiring masks.
Also, in suburban and rural areas, private car transportation is much more common where in the city cars are an expensive luxury, so in cities your transportation is an added virus transmission risk. The NYC subway was a huge factor in the virus explosion there, for example.
Take a look at the dashboard where I live:
https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/sites/covid-19/home/covid-da...
On the left-hand side, switch to the "Weekly by Zip" view and on the right-hand side a map of the city will show up. The really dense parts of the city are along the eastern edge, from the middle and going north. This is where all the high-rise buildings are.
If you look at the western part of the city, from the middle and going south, this is pretty low density.
The main difference is dense parts of the city do not have crowded living spaces, while the less dense parts have a lot of overcrowding.
bars/clubs are different because they're primarily spaces for guard-lowering behaviors (drinking, dancing, etc.), which also lowers risk mitigation practices against infection.
this misperception of risk is what leads us to poorly placed faith in lockdowns, rather than the more sensible "distance, and when you can't mask" rule that has (nearly) all the benefits and (nearly) none of the massive downsides.