Bucking the COVID-19 odds

We’re not New York! We’re not Philadelphia!” An old friend from Shaler, antsy to get back inside a bar or a barber shop, texted me that last week. In the middle of a long exchange, I’d argued what seems to be an obvious truth: Social isolation had kept the COVID-19 virus from finding much purchase in Western Pennsylvania outside of the scandalously high toll in our nursing homes.

Now that Pennsylvania is gingerly easing its foot off the economic brakes, I had no interest in his argument that West Virginia had fewer restrictions.

Come on. Our southern neighbor has no big cities. There are only 35 U.S. counties with a higher population than Allegheny, and our 1.2 million residents only recently began mixing in ways we haven’t for months. There’s nothing magical about a Pennsylvanian that gives us superpowers New Yorkers don’t possess, I told my friend. And that’s when he gave me the ol’ 1-2 about New York and Philly.

Among the many things I’ve learned during the pandemic lockdown is how many Pittsburghers, both natives and new arrivals, have a skewed vision of this place. We’ve wallowed so long in the woe-is-us story of the regional exodus after the implosion of the steel industry more than three decades ago, some seem to believe nobody lives here anymore.

’Tain’t true. I noted May 7 that of the 65 U.S. cities larger than Pittsburgh, only 19 have more residents per square mile than Pittsburgh’s roughly 5,500. Our city has an unfashionably small 55.6square-mile footprint, a fraction the size of sprawling Sun Belt cities, and when commuters arrive for work, Downtown and Oakland are as crowded at lunchtime as the nighttime densities of Boston or Chicago.

Not that we’ll be that crowded again soon, if ever. Telecommuting and staggered work hours already have changed that. But my friend’s bluster about getting back inside one of our favorite North Side pubs left me with visions of someone like him decimating the Mexican War Streets before he gets two beers in.

So as more head back to work, and some see no reason to respect fellow workers by wearing a mask anywhere, let’s consider how lucky we’ve been so far when compared with those counties with the highest rates of viral infection.

My friend is right about this much: The four most densely populated counties in America are the New York City boroughs of Manhattan, Brooklyn, the Bronx and Queens. Philadelphia County is eighth. Allegheny County doesn’t make the top 50, with about oneseventh the density of Pennsylvania’s most populous city and county, which are one and the same.

Density matters for the obvious reason that close quarters make it easier for the virus to hop around. Because we began our social distancing before the virus had a foothold, or more accurately a facehold, Western Pennsylvania has been spared what similarly dense counties in the commonwealth have endured.

Allegheny is the fourth most densely populated county in Pennsylvania (after Philadelphia and its collar counties of Delaware and Montgomery). But checking The New York Times data through Monday afternoon on COVID-19 cases per capita, Allegheny ranked 30th among Pennsylvania counties, with one case per 747 residents. The death rate ranked 25th, with one per 8,570 residents.

Five of the other six counties in the Pittsburgh metro area have fared even better. Again using the Times data through Monday afternoon, the rankings for most cases per capita were: Westmoreland, 33rd-highest among Pennsylvania’s 67 counties, one case in 821 residents; Butler, 36th, one in 919; Armstrong, 41st, one in 1,414; Fayette, 48th, one in 1,454; and Washington, 51st, one in 1,561. For deaths per capita, Westmoreland ranked 26th, one in 9,336; Butler, 32nd, one in 15,547; Fayette, 40th, one in 33,072; Armstrong, 41st, one in 33,166; and Washington, 48th, one in 51,887.

The outlier is Beaver County, which ranked 13th in deaths per capita on the Times’ Pennsylvania list, with one per 2,384 residents, and 22nd in cases, with one per 313 residents. That is sadly due to the outbreak at the 589-bed Brighton Rehabilitation and Wellness Center nursing home, which has had 358 COVID-19 cases among residents, 25 among staff, and 76 resident deaths, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Health figures released Tuesday.

Pennsylvania’s most densely populated counties — Philadelphia, Delaware and Montgomery — are third, first and second in COVID-19 deaths per capita, each with a rate six or seven times that of Allegheny. But 21 other counties of lower density than ours — Bucks, Berks, Lackawanna, Lancaster, Lehigh and Chester prominent among them — have higher death rates.

Some rankings may change, in part due to the state’s new way of counting deaths by the county where the deceased had a permanent residence. But if all of the U.S. had dodged the virus as well as Western Pennsylvania has so far, even calling it an epidemic would be an overstatement. Not that that’s any comfort to those who have been sickened, or to the loved ones of those who have died.

It could get worse here quickly if people aren’t careful. So respect fellow workers. Keep some distance and wear a mask.

“This virus is not going away,” my friend, desperate for a haircut, argued. “Neither will the next one, or the one after that. We have to learn to live with it.”

That may be, but count me as a shaggy citizen not caring to sit down to share a shot and a beer with the virus in a cozy little pub anytime soon.