COVID-19 Studies Are Proving That Density Is Not the Enemy
The real risk factor is different
By Justin Davidson
In the early months of the pandemic, it became deceptively obvious that dense cities were dangerous. As COVID-19 stampeded through New York, those who had options dispersed themselves into nature, while the Trump administration wrote off COVID-19 as a strictly urban disease — unfortunate for Democrats, immigrants, and nursing home residents, but irrelevant to the president’s fan base. Pundits fired up their anti–New York prejudices: city folk are constantly exhaling all over each other; suburbanites can relax in their roving decontamination chambers on wheels. When hell is other people, the path to salvation runs through a cul-de-sac. The Washington Post columnist Henry Olsen proclaimed on March 19 that the suburban lifestyle was the nation’s “secret weapon” against the virus. “The data are crystal clear on this. China’s population density is 397 people per square mile. Italy’s is 532 people per square mile, and South Korea’s is 1,366. The United States, by contrast, has only 94 people per square mile. That’s got to be a fact in our favor.”
Turns out it wasn’t.
The arguments over density and this latest contagion have been largely speculative, resulting in an orgy of confirmation bias. One…
