I was struck by this NPR story today about which states are most effectively contact tracing--and the fact that five of six were pretty rural (yes, "pretty rural" is a technical term linked to an ecological definition). The states doing the best job are all in New England, where the definition for rural is less strict: Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont. Defying the trend is that the District of Columbia, which is uber urban, falls into that category.
The next three states in terms of their capacity to do contact tracing on reported cases are somewhat rural--well, two-thirds of them are. They are Montana, Hawaii, Michigan. Of them, Montana is the most rural, which may mean it has the most manageable number of cases--manageable in part because of small population or population sparseness. These states all have reserve staff to meet contact tracing need.
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