Are people in the South more at risk from Covid-19 or is this just more fear-mongering?

New media reports suggest younger people are contracting the coronavirus in southern US states at a higher rate, and greater travel puts the region more at risk, but they ignore long-standing realities.

“More young people in the South seem to be dying from Covid-19,” The Atlantic announced in their latest report on the pandemic, compiled through their own Covid Tracking Project.

In Louisiana, people in the age range of 40-59 account for 22 percent of the 310 deaths — out of 9,150 cases — in the state, according to the report. That same age range makes up nearly 20 percent of the 163 deaths — out of 5,348 cases —  in Georgia. It also notes that those age ranges are in the single digit ranges when it comes to death from the virus in states such as Washington and Colorado, which has a total of 80 deaths and 3,342 cases. 

“The outbreaks currently expanding in the American South are unique – and mainly because of how many people in their working prime are dying,” Atlantic’s Vann Newkirk writes. Most of the deaths in hard-hit countries like China and Spain have mainly belonged to the elderly — people under 70 make up only 12 percent of the deaths in Spain, for instance.

Newkirk cited an analysis from the Kaiser Family Foundation, which used CDC guidelines about the coronavirus to identify people most at risk – people over 60, as well as those under that age who suffer from heart disease, cancer, lung disease, or diabetes.

The analysis concludes that in the southern US states of Arkansas, Alabama, Kentucky, Tennessee, Louisiana, and Mississippi, younger people make up around a quarter of the at-risk population, which is higher than in other states.

While that data is unique compared to the rest of the US, it should not be surprising. Southern states have long been listed as the unhealthiest in the nation because heart disease and obesity rates are higher, creating more risk for younger people facing the coronavirus.

According to America’s Health Rankings, which rates the health of US states every year, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi are the least healthy, with high levels of obesity, cardiovascular deaths and diabetes.

Younger southerners are more at risk from the coronavirus because of all of these factors, just as they have been from seasonal flu. In the 2018 annual report, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said that the most deaths from the flu were from states like Tennessee, Alabama and Mississippi.

Meanwhile, the New York Times published a report on Thursday suggesting that the South was particularly at risk from the coronavirus. The “study” claimed the spread of the coronavirus could be much worse in the South based on people traveling longer distances, even with stay-at-home guidelines now in place – accompanied by an ominous-looking map.

“In a word ...The South,” tweeted Michael Barbaro, host of the Times podcast The Daily. He received plenty of flak for ignoring the realities of the region to seemingly take a low political blow at 'red states.'

The map ignores the basic reality of population density, many of the critics pointed out. This is something Axios co-founder Jim VanderHei also ignored when visiting MSNBC’s ‘Morning Joe’ on Thursday, where he suggested the Republican-voting “red states” in the South were responding slower to the virus for political reasons. The reality is less population density means there are simply fewer cases, because the virus does not spread as quickly as in places like New York City. 

Lack of population density accounts for people traveling longer distances in the South, but it does not present more danger because traveling more than two miles in, say, Mississippi, is completely different from doing so in New York.

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