Author: TheConversation

By David J. Peters, Associate Professor of Rural Sociology, Iowa State University Rural areas seemed immune as the coronavirus spread through cities earlier this year. Few rural cases were reported, and attention focused on the surge of illnesses and deaths in the big metro areas. But that false sense of safety is now falling apart as infection rates explode in rural areas across the country. Of the top 25 COVID-19 hot spots that popped up in the last two weeks, 18 were in non-metropolitan counties. Arkansas, North Carolina and Texas all set records in mid-June for the number of...

By Qian Cai, Research Director of Demographics Research Group, University of Virginia For the Census Bureau, the timing of national shutdowns due to the pandemic could not have been much worse. Stay-at-home orders in March coincided with the period when millions of Americans received their census questionnaires in the mail. But large numbers of Americans moved from where they normally live to somewhere else – in with relatives with spare rooms, back home from college or even released from prisons. These highly unusual circumstances are likely to result in failures to count, double-counting or counting in the wrong place...

By Joanna Wares, Associate Professor of Mathematics, University of Richmond; and Sara Krehbiel, Assistant Professor of Mathematics and Computer Science, Santa Clara University Since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, use of the term “herd immunity” has spread almost as fast as the virus. But its use is fraught with misconceptions. In the U.K., officials briefly considered a herd immunity strategy to protect the most vulnerable members of its population by encouraging others to become exposed and develop immunity to the virus. Others reignited the discussion by focusing on how far we are from herd immunity. But trying to...