HuffPost reported that COVID-19 is killing rural Americans at twice the rate of urban residents.
The first surge of COVID-19 in the spring of 2020 initially hit urban areas hardest, with high rates of infections and deaths, according to the study for the Rural Policy Research Center published in September 2021. At the time, many rural communities were largely untouched.
But subsequent waves of the pandemic tore through rural areas, where many people are older, in poorer health, unvaccinated. Rural rates of infections and deaths began pulling ahead of metropolitan areas at the beginning of summer 2020, the study noted.
Since the pandemic began, about 1 in 434 rural Americans have died from COVID-19, compared with roughly 1 in 513 urban Americans. But as of mid-September 2021, metropolitan areas were experiencing a seven-day average death rate of 0.41 per 100,000 people, while rural communities had an average death rate of 0.85.
Alan Morgan, head of the National Rural Health Association, told NBC News, “We’ve turned many rural communities into kill boxes,” he added. “And there’s no movement towards addressing what we’re seeing in many of these communities, either among the public, or among governing officials.”
The Washington Post reported earlier this month that COVID cases and deaths were notably higher in Republican states than in Democratic states.
Of the 23 states that had new per capita case totals higher than the U.S. average, 21 voted for the former president in November, the Post noted. Sixteen of them were among the 17 states with the lowest rates of vaccination.
The newspaper called it an “inescapable overlap of pandemic and politics” as Republicans battle against mask and vaccine mandates, essentially killing their constituents.