Bordering states, different outcomes: Wyoming has 7 COVID-19 deaths, Denver has 248 Covid deaths with 1,150 in Colorado (generation, statistics)
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Wyomingites tend to live "social distancing." Out of state travel is less popular. Why would they leave? They live where people flock to for vacation.
Early cases were linked to people who had traveled away. The state discourages visitors coming in pretty quickly. Later cases were from community spread, including a relatively high rate on the Wind River Reservation. But that is also in part due to mass testing. The tribes have some bright folks who wrote grants and got great funding for rez-wide testing.
I'm pretty fond of Wyoming, but it compares to few other places. I lived there for years. It's a nice place to visit, too.
Are we really going to keep rehashing the point that COVID-19 spreads faster in denser populated regions? There's no magic here; the closer people are to each other, the better it can spread.
Good point.
Some people are just plain stupid.
They think a Wyoming rancher out on a horse riding the range checking fences all day long is in an office with 30 other people, not counting all the people on the elevator going up to the office and on the elevator going down for lunch and then all the people going back up on the elevator and then back down to leave the office and all the people in the lobby of the office building and all the people on the street passed going to and from the lunch place and all the people in the lunch place.
The red state correlation in the really low red states looks to be directly correlated to population density. Alaska, Montana, Wyoming. Utah is in there and it's lower rate is highly likely due to clean living and a lower average age per capita.
And maybe those 4 states don't have any large meat processing plants.
They think a Wyoming rancher out on a horse riding the range checking fences all day long is in an office with 30 other people, not counting all the people on the elevator going up to the office and on the elevator going down for lunch and then all the people going back up on the elevator and then back down to leave the office and all the people in the lobby of the office building and all the people on the street passed going to and from the lunch place and all the people in the lunch place.
There's just no hope for some people.
Yep. We have a lot of ignorant people. Like those that attack low-density, largely rural states for "opening up" or even having the nerve to not "lock down" their citizens. They seem to think that people in these low-density states have to wait until those in crowded, filthy hellholes like NYC or Philadelphia can do so.
Hawaii doesn't follow the trend you're suggesting. They are the 13th most densely populated state, yet they are tied with Wyoming for lowest deaths per capita. Maybe the fact that they are completely isolated from the 49 other states is their secret to success. Who knows?
And maybe those 4 states don't have any large meat processing plants.
Could be, but it's interesting, in my small Oklahoma town we have a meat processing plant (full of illegals) and yet we have had only three cases in town. All our resolved. Meanwhile, it looks like it has hit in the Guymon, OK meat plants pretty hard.
It's possible that what meat plants they have in those states just haven't seen it yet.
And maybe those 4 states don't have any large meat processing plants.
Odds are quite massively against it. Meat processing plants tend to be pretty much everywhere. You have People Eating Tasty Animals in every state and it's just massively inefficient to not to have the processing plants close to the market where they're sold.
You could try looking it up of course. But hey, why not? Let's roll with your assumption that meat processing plants increase the fatalities. It does appear that the top slaughtering states per popular tasty animal are:
Georgia for Chickens - 16th highest death rate per capita.
Nebraska for Cattle - 37th highest death rate per capita.
Minnesota for Turkeys - 19th highest death rate per capita.
Iowa for hogs - 24th highest death rate per capita.
So it seems that none of these are the worst hit states, despite two of them having major metropolitan areas (Atlanta and Minneapolis) and the other two also having reasonably large urban areas as well (Omaha, Council Bluffs and Des Moines). I don't think meat processing plants is driving the numbers at all.
To be honest, I'm pretty surprised by the fact that there is a much stronger correlation to Red State vs Blue State than anything else you've mentioned. Is it possible that not putting a strict lockdown was the right choice after all? That is one of the few things where Red vs Blue diverges most significantly.
There are presently 12 state-inspected slaughter plants and 20 state inspected meat-processing plants in Wyoming.
I assume they aren't huge but they would probably be set up in a similar fashion to larger plants. Just less employees.
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