As I write this from the ghost town formerly known as Manhattan, I’ve already seen the immense impact of the coronavirus first hand. This city is a unique place, with a huge variety of people working in a diverse set of industries. There is a lot of everything packed into a really tight space. Is it any wonder COVID-19 exploded here?

Although a lot of New Yorkers tend to forget this, the rest of the country looks very different than this people-packed concrete jungle. While some blanket assumptions have been made about the economic impact of the coronavirus, we should keep in mind the unique qualities of the diverse states.

The following analysis continues my ongoing coverage of COVID-19. If you haven’t subscribed yet and are interested in future content, feel free to sign up to never miss a post.

An obvious place to start an analysis for that kind of thinking is infections per state:

If you take the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases per state and divide that by the population of each state, you get the map above (which is scaled to cases per million residents). New York State is currently a dumpster fire with 812 cases per million residents. Following close behind is Washington State, where the first few outbreak clusters were identified.

One thing that surprised me while making this map was the relatively light ratio of cases for California. In my mind, California has been doing pretty badly for infections but when you compare it to the massive population it’s not as bad as expected.

Texas (though Yankees hate to admit it) is also a hugely important state in terms of the overall economy and, thankfully, holding up well so far. Having a driving culture instead of packing into subway cars looks better and better by the day.

Florida is another state to watch, as the population skews older. By now, we are all aware of the relationship between age and lethality.

I’ll stop going through this one state at a time for the sake of your sanity as a reader but those quick examples already paint a diverse set of scenarios for how this is playing out around the country. And, if I didn’t name your state, it’s not because you aren’t important! The point is, we have so many lives at risk around the nation - we can’t just focus all of our attention and effort on places like New York City.

Each state has its own industries, demographics, population density, etc. Some states have a higher number of jobs in industries like restaurants and hospitality and will see higher unemployment because of it. Some states have more jobs that are conducive to working from home. These small nuances could mean huge differences in terms of economic impact. Our overall strategy should incorporate this state-level nuance to efficiently deploy aid and fiscal support to mitigate the burden of the outbreak.

We have a diverse nation. Let’s use that to our advantage as we come together to beat this thing.