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I'm happy to be in our medium-sized town in coastal California. Groceries are stocked, you can find TP at one store if you can't find it at another.
I'm glad I'm not stuck in a dense neighborhood in LA or--worse yet--Boston or NYC, where you can't walk the streets without coming within 10 feet of someone else.
I would rather be in a country with good healthcare, a plan for pandemics, and one that took the virus seriously and didn't shut down. So I'd take one of the densest cities in the world: Taipei, over my medium town. But I'll settle for second-best. Taiwan isn't letting people from the USA in, so it's not like I have a choice.
I would also not want to be in a one-grocery/superstore/hospital small town where, if the Walmart 20 miles away is out of something, you just wasted your hour drive and got exposed to the virus for nothing. Or if the virus does hit the community, the hospital isn't high enough on the totem to get any relief supplies.
Only the ones that have been losing population for years and years. They're on the way to becoming ghost towns. My town has been growing for years and it isn't creepy to me.
- U.S. rural populations are older, on average, than urban populations
- Rural areas suffer from a "mortality penalty" due to high unemployment, and chronic financial stress, compared with urban areas
- 1 in 4 rural hospitals are vulnerable to being shuttered. 150 have been closed over the past decade.
- Rural counties have a total of only 5,600 I.C.U. beds, as compared to 50,000 I.C.U. beds in urban counties.
- Centers for Medicare/Medicaid Services has recently expanded the authority for telemedicine, by authorizing payments for telemedical services (consultation between patients and doctors by Skype). However, many remote rural western ranching areas have no broadband access, and spotty telephone service.
Normally, I spend Easters at my childhoom home on a rural indigenous reservation with family. It's in the southwestern USA. In childhood, Easters usually included Easter egg hunts in remote picnic spots up in the mountains. The family gathering usually had a camp fire with fire-roasted steaks, home-made tortillas, green chili, and corn. Such areas are teeming with wildlife and nature. These rugged camp sites are far "off the grid" and the closest building is usually a remote ranch home miles away that may have worn down over the years. Internet and smartphone towers are absent. Onstar may not work. Usually, flowers are blooming at that elevation. The places were accessible by remote dirt roads sometimes requiring a 4x4 with all terrain tires and tough underplates.
But today all those roads are closed. The anxiety in small-town USA is very high. They even have a curfew. I do have a background in public health. The fear leads to a heightened allostatic load with hypertension, headaches, high blood pressure, elevated cortisol, etc. For such areas, large cities in the state are considered hot spots. Hence, they restrict travel and have strict rules on social distancing. Outsiders visiting family or friends are under high scrutiny.
The small, rurall clinics are vulnerable to being quickly overwhelmed if clusters arise. Oftentimes, the rural clinics shuttle patients to ICUs in Phoenix via flights. If cases do increase, it would be really bad. Hopefully, the isolation and social distancing do "flatten the curve". Meanwhile, this Easter I was stuck in Phoenix since those mountain roads were closed for those family gatherings.
We have had just a few cases in our rural county. Theses plenty in the stores, even tp. People get out and walk, more kids are outside playing riding bikes etc. Some of the parks are open. Last night I saw over 25 deer on the way home from work. I see vultures hawks, turkeys, cranes even a bald eagle 2 weeks ago. Small town is the place to be.
We have had just a few cases in our rural county. Theses plenty in the stores, even tp. People get out and walk, more kids are outside playing riding bikes etc. Some of the parks are open. Last night I saw over 25 deer on the way home from work. I see vultures hawks, turkeys, cranes even a bald eagle 2 weeks ago. Small town is the place to be.
I am so very glad to be in the small town I moved to 2 years ago. What a relief. So much less stress. I was able to get debt free from selling our previous home and our new home is in many ways even nicer, let alone a ton more efficient. Our utility bills are 1/3 of what they once were. We don't have to drive but less than a mile for groceries, a couple of restaurants, a doctor, hardware and more. So ideal. Our neighbors are unreal wonderful. Wish I'd done this years ago now. If I need major medical it's less than a half hour away. Lots of farming in our area with fresh veggies and fruits. Air quality to be jealous of, NO pollution. I'm not sure how much better it could possibly be. To boot you can hear nothing but the birds, cows off in a distance on occasion, ducks, geese and no screaming.....well you know. My kind of place.
“Just because you have 10 times more people doesn’t mean you get 10 times more virus. The population density is driving this inevitability,” said Locwin, whose resume includes time as a senior consultant to the Centers for Disease Control. “It’s all about so much high-rise living, people stacked up, all sharing volumes of air, touching the same doorknobs.
“There is, generally speaking, a lot more space and air volume in New Hampshire,” said Locwin.
That’s the first point Sununu and State Epidemiologist Dr. Benjamin Chan turn to when pressed why they think New Hampshire’s incidence of disease has been lower.
“Areas like Boston, you have an apartment building, close confined coffee shops, everyday living and workplace environments that can be very dangerous, and that makes it very difficult to mitigate the spread,” Sununu said.
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Reasons many for fewer NH infections than Mass.
