Cold Covid - part the twenty second

In the event you haven't visited the NYT Covid data page in a while, now might be a good time to do so. Yes, the early Covid-ο states have topped the hill and, mostly, coming back down just as rapidly as they went up. Another data point that argues for, at least, local herd immunity to a variant. So far, I haven't heard Fauci, et al, admit that.

But the point of this missive is to look at the deaths per capita country map. Boy howdy!! Them thar Red States do like to kill off their kin!! The step graph of deaths per vaccinated/unvaccinated (scroll down a bit) is truly out of hand, although the 20x figure for the unvaccinated is as-of 4 December, before Covid-ο took hold. We do know from the daily-ish data graph that overall deaths are rising at a good clip.

My home state of MA is somewhat unexpected. The western county, Hampden, which borders CT and has it's main city Springfield, and Bristol county in the east and bordering RI (New Bedford is the main city) show as the highest deaths per capita, not Boston or Worcester.

Checking wiki census/income data, we find Hampden is largely poor, Bristol is quite the same. Access to healthcare matters.

But, north of the Mason-Dixon Line, the Dark Counties are generally small population rural, aka Red, counties. An exception, of course, is New England + New York, where the death rates are nearly all at or near the bottom of the scale, even in rural areas. While in the true Red states, Dark Counties are everywhere.