Orange County Remains an Oasis of COVID-19 Safety

I continue to be sort of fascinated by the spread of COVID-19 in California. This is mainly because Orange County, where I live, is such an outlier:

Contrary to popular belief, Orange County is pretty dense but its incidence of COVID-19 is very low. Why is that? More generally, there’s not much of a correlation between density and COVID-19 mortality at all. In the upper left of the chart you can see a bunch of counties with very low population densities but surprisingly high rates of coronavirus deaths.

For the more visually minded of you , here’s a map of Southern California from the LA Times:

Orange County is an island of moderate COVID mortality surrounded by a sea of high mortality. What’s our secret?

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