COVID-19 is not a universal killer. We study the spread of COVID-19 at the county level for the United States up until the 15th of August, 2020. We show that the prevalence of the disease and the death rate are correlated with the local socio-economic conditions often going beyond local population density distributions, especially in rural areas. We correlate the COVID-19 prevalence and death rate with data from the US Census Bureau and point out how the spreading patterns of the disease show asymmetries in urban and rural areas separately and are preferentially affecting the counties where a large fraction of the population is non-white. Our findings can be used for more targeted policy building and deployment of resources for future occurrence of a pandemic due to SARS-CoV-2. Our methodology, based on interpretable machine learning and game theory, can be extended to study the spread of other diseases.

COVID-19 不是万能杀手。我们研究了截至 2020 年 8 月 15 日的 COVID-19 在美国县级的传播情况。我们表明，该疾病的流行和死亡率与当地社会经济条件相关，通常超出当地人口密度分布，尤其是在农村地区。我们将 COVID-19 流行率和死亡率与美国人口普查局的数据相关联，并指出该疾病的传播模式如何在城市和农村地区分别显示出不对称性，并优先影响大部分人口非正常人口的县-白色的。我们的研究结果可用于更有针对性的政策制定和资源部署，以应对未来因 SARS-CoV-2 引起的大流行。我们的方法论，