The spread of the coronavirus in the United States in recent weeks has been worse than it seems, not because of how it has been spreading but where.
The virus has been pummeling some of the least populous states in the country, but the relatively low numbers can be deceptive. The surges in rural areas have been just as severe as the spikes in densely populated cities in the Sun Belt over the summer.
North Dakota, South Dakota and Montana, for example, have announced the country’s highest number of cases on a per capita basis. Already, the North Dakota and South Dakota numbers exceed the per capita figures seen at the peak of summer surges in the Sun Belt.
Other states with large rural areas — including Wyoming, Idaho, West Virginia, Nebraska, Iowa, Utah, Alaska and Oklahoma — have recently recorded more cases in a seven-day stretch than in any other week of the pandemic.
“We, as North Dakotans, find ourselves in the middle of a regional Covid storm,” Gov. Doug Burgum said Wednesday.
But population can skew perspective.
Wessington Springs, S.D., or Shelby, Mont., are unlikely to produce the same alarming imagery amid a pandemic as New York City or Houston, where mobile morgues and packed E.R. hallways became icons of suffering. ...
