Socio-Economic Disparities and COVID-19 in the USA
Paul, A., Englert, P., Varga, M. Socio-economic disparities and COVID-19 in the USA. J. of. Phys: Complexity. https://doi.org/10.1088/2632-072X/ac0fc7
12 Pages Posted: 11 Sep 2020 Last revised: 13 Jul 2021
Date Written: September 10, 2020
Abstract
COVID-19 is not a universal killer. We study the spread of COVID-19 at the county level for the United States up until the 15$^{th}$ of August, 2020. We show that the prevalence of the disease and the death rate are correlated with the local socio-economic conditions often going beyond local population density distributions, especially in rural areas. We correlate the COVID-19 prevalence and death rate with data from the US Census Bureau and point out how the spreading patterns of the disease show asymmetries in urban and rural areas separately and are preferentially affecting the counties where a large fraction of the population is non-white. Our findings can be used for more targeted policy building and deployment of resources for future occurrence of a pandemic due to SARS-CoV-2. Our methodology, based on interpretable machine learning and game theory, can be extended to study the spread of other diseases.
Keywords: COVID-19, Socioeconomic disparities, USA
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