Researchers identify social factors inoculating some communities against coronavirus

[BainsBane]

Social factors also are at the heart of any pandemic response, particularly before the development of a vaccine. Adhering to coronavirus countermeasures — using masks, getting tested and maintaining social distance — are as much a reflection of concern for others as they are of self-preservation.

It stands to reason, then, that stronger, more connected and more trusting communities would have more success weathering the pandemic. This is the idea motivating the recent paper by Christos Makridis of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Cary Wu of York University in Toronto. Their work assesses whether the level of social capital in a community predicts the severity of the pandemic there. . . .

Makridis and Wu also broke down the committee’s social capital index to determine which element is most closely related to covid-19 severity. They found that “greater trust and relationships within a community” were some of the most powerful predictors of virus spread. “When individuals have a greater concern for others, they are more willing to follow hygienic practices and social distancing.”

Conversely, in places with low social capital, people tend to be distrustful of the government, making them less likely to comply with social distancing and mask mandates. This can create a type of vicious cycle, Makridis and Wu write: Lack of compliance with public health directives leads to more severe outbreaks, which causes trust in government to erode further.

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/02/11/social-capital-covid-spread/

[Dream Girl]

1. Not sure if I'm reading this correctly but the legend seemed flipped.

Am I missing something?

[BainsBane]

4. Be sure to read the whole article

The legend isn't flipped. Part of it relates to low population density, but that alone isn't enough to mitigate COVID spread in regions like the South, where what researchers call their "social capital" and trust in government is low.

[Squinch]

2. Am I reading this wrong? It doesn't seem to fit what has happened. For example, it shows

the Dakotas with very high social capital, but they had some of the worst Covid numbers.

[BainsBane]

3. I think low population density is a factor

The committee’s report identifies two U.S. regions where social capital is high: what it calls the “mid-continent North,” stretching roughly from Utah to the upper Midwestern states of Minnesota and Wisconsin, and the northern New England states of Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine.

One defining feature of all 12 states in these regions: They’re sparsely populated, home to just 9 percent of the U.S. population. Surveys have shown that people living in rural communities are generally more trusting of their friends and neighbors than people elsewhere, which can help build strong social networks. Some scholars who study social capital contend that in sparsely populated rural communities, “collective behavior is essential to provide basic services, like volunteer fire departments, that are provided by government in urban areas.”

On the other hand, the southern half of the country performs particularly poorly on the committee’s index. New York also stands out for low levels of social capital relative to its neighbors.

Makridis and Wu compared the committee’s social capital index score with county-level data on coronavirus infections, case growth and mortality. They controlled for a number of other factors that could plausibly influence severity, including population density, age, education and poverty.

“We find that moving a county from the 25th to the 75th percentile of the distribution of social capital would lead to a 18% and 5.7% decline in the cumulative number of infections and deaths,” they write.