The Covid-19 pandemic has torn through the United States in the last 12 months, leaving more than half a million dead and the nation’s economy in tatters, but the virus didn’t arrive on a blank slate. Long before Covid, the Deaths of Despair epidemic was already taking a massive toll in communities of different kinds across the country.
Over the past year, the intersection of those two challenges has created a complicated mix of impacts across county types in the American Communities Project. Some places hit hard by Deaths of Despair seem better equipped to handle the challenges of Covid. Other places that have not seen so many Deaths of Despair have seen higher death rates from the virus.
But in a larger sense, the mortality data for the two national epidemics show how local economic and cultural factors play large roles in communities’ overall health. CONTINUED
Dante Chinni, American Communities Project
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