
Rural Cities Overtake NYC in per Capita Covid-19 Cases - OrganizedChaos
https://www.cybercoastal.com/rural-cities-pass-nyc-in-per-capita-cases/
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blakesterz
This post is from a NYTimes story from about a month ago:

[https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/23/upshot/five-w...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/23/upshot/five-
ways-to-monitor-coronavirus-outbreak-us.html)

Those very few limited rural cities that were ahead of NYC at the time had
things like prisons and meat packing plants.

The NY Times has a bunch of stats here they keep updated, including current
Per Capita numbers:

[https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-
us-c...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-us-
cases.html)

~~~
Zancarius
Yep, that's true where I'm from. The county has a total of maybe a dozen or so
cases. But we have two correctional facilities that have almost an order of
magnitude more. The next city over has hundreds of cases, but they also have a
meat packing plant where most of these are (in addition to their own
correctional facilities and one or more federal ones).

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danans
The implication of the title, that rural cities in general have overtaken NYC
isn't necessarily backed up by the data, unless it can be shown to be a
pattern in a huge number of rural cities, such the the combined population of
those reaches a level of statistical significance. The data in the NYT article
also shows more rural cities that have lower case rates than NYC.

The more likely scenario is that these rural cities with higher case rates
than NYC represent their own individual outbreaks of the pandemic. That might
become more of a pattern, especially as shelter-in-place restrictions are
increasingly lifted, but it's too early to make that prediction.

~~~
vikramkr
The observation actually perfectly fits a statistical principle that you're
just going to see more extremes (lower and larger per capital cases) in
smaller populations because probability.

~~~
danans
I'd cast just as much doubt on stats showing low cases/1000 in small cities
and towns and subsequent predictions that small towns won't be affected.

I don't think we have enough data in those places to know the patterns either
way, especially since the situation is changed daily. The dynamics of this
disease aren't well understood enough. Earlier it was thought that the heat of
the southern hemisphere was protecting it, but now Latin America is seeing a
large rise in cases.

EDIT: removed my comment about low sample size and high variance, since the
case rate is just a about cases/100 people, not based on a sampling procedure.

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j-c-hewitt
Shouldn't the headline say "Three Small Cities..." because it implies that
"rural cities" as a category have overtaken New York City in per capita
Covid-19 cases, which is false.

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rayiner
I'm not sure this is meaningful. Marion Ohio, for example, has 36,837 people
(66,000 people in the county). The whole county has had 23 deaths. That works
out to 35-62 deaths per 100,000 (depending on how many were in the city versus
the rest of the county). NYC is at 205 deaths per 100,000.

~~~
marcell
It maybe due to NY's policy at the start of the outbreak, which put recovering
Covid patients in nursing homes. It probably spiked their death count without
causing a corresponding spike in cases.

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paulgb
Direct anchor link to the NYT source data table:
[https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/23/upshot/five-w...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/23/upshot/five-
ways-to-monitor-coronavirus-outbreak-us.html#cumulative)

~~~
dvtrn
>Our essential coronavirus coverage is free. Create an account or log in to
keep reading. No subscription required.

Then why can't I close the dialog box asking me to sign up and view the
reported data?

~~~
elliekelly
You don't have to subscribe but you do have to sign up. It doesn't cost any
money to make an account.

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linuxftw
Rural Cities is an oxymoron. If it's a city, by definition, it's not rural.

You could say 'smaller cities' or any number of other things.

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downerending
TLDR: _Three_ rural cities.

Given some basic assumptions about the distribution of case rates, it's not at
all surprising that a few cities from that fairly large set happen to exceed
NYC.

Nothing to see here.

~~~
IG_Semmelweiss
Agreed. How can a media outlet can extrapolate this into the title is
incredible to me.

Probably why the label that gets thrown around of "fake media" is so sticky

~~~
swamp40
Here's another beauty:
[https://twitter.com/pewresearch/status/1265636238255669252?s...](https://twitter.com/pewresearch/status/1265636238255669252?s=20)

~~~
downerending
Good grief. I bet the number of murders in NYC dropped more than in Paducah
during all this as well. Let's hear it for New York! :-P

Particularly shameful coming from Pew, who I think of as one of the last
fairly neutral sources.

