Our county in GA is not looking too good. It has a small population, of just under 13,000 and one small city. The rest is rural - no other towns. GA DPH site shows a map of counties by cases per 100K occurring in the last 14 days, and our county is one of very few dark brown, i.e. worst. 54% of the county cases occurred in the last 14 days. Browsing the map and only looking at the handful of dark brown counties, that seems to be the highest recent increase rate As the remainder are ~1/3 or less.
Other than Walmart with their strict prevention measures, few other places seem to be observing precautions. I think people here feel safe, and simply don’t recognize their risk as many have lived here all their lives and know almost everybody. I think people were careful at first, especially the older ones, but eventually decided they were safe enough.
I notice the county next to us, where DF was in assisted living, and has a similar size, population and one major small city, is doing much better. It hasn’t seen a recent jump in cases, and is way better overall even though it started out much worse in March. I notice more people taking precautions there.
There is a small state university in our county city, but in person classes have not started yet, and students returning to campus is too recent to account for the recent spike in cases IMO. Also, unless a student is a resident of our county they won’t show up in the county case numbers. The university has been under strict mask wearing and social distancing rules since July 15.
