In eeholmes/CoV19: Eli's package for figures and data on CoV-19 epidemic

knitr::opts_chunk$set(echo = FALSE, warning=FALSE, message=FALSE, fig.height=6)

Update 20. Coronavirus in Rural Counties.

The largest numbers of cases are obviously in the cities (more people there = more cases even if per capita number of cases is low). On a per capita basis, many of the top counties are in rural America and it is mainly in counties with a meatpacking plant. I looked up the top 50 counties and then did some googling to find out where the hotspot in the county started. Note in all cases, the outbreak spreads. So the hotspot might be in the prison or meatpacking plant, but it spreads out from there as the outbreak progresses. You might have heard about the South Dakota meatpacking plant (outside Boise) as that got a bunch of press, but that's way down at 49. The main meatpacking outbreaks are in Iowa, Nebraska, Minnesota, Ohio. Another big rural outbreak is in SW Georgia -- though that includes Albany, GA, the outbreak there has spread into rural surrounding counties. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1109053/coronavirus-covid19-cases-rates-us-americans-most-impacted-counties/

per capita cases goes from 5.3 per 1000 for 1 to 1 per 1000 for 50. As always these are the positive tests not total infections.

28 of 50 of the top counties are rural and for 11 of theses the main hotspot was a meatpacking plant. 17 are associated with urban outbreaks (NYC, New Orleans, Boston); though note that 4 of the New Orleans associated counties are rural. Only 3 are associated with nursing home hotspots (i.e. initial hotspot was a nursing home).

5 Rural - prisons
11 Rural - meatpacking plants
1 Rural - nursing home (unique case, involving visit to a rural nursing home from someone out of area)
10 NYC outbreak
6 New Orleans outbreak (4 are rural counties which were infected as the New Orleans outbreak spread)
8 SW Georgia community spread (7 are rural counties)

Single counties: Boston, Richland, Virgina - nursing homes, Sun Valley, ID ski town, AZ - Navajo Nation

Top positive tests per counties per capita