It's Thanksgiving, also known as DJ Khaled's birthday , and COVID-19 is back with a vengeance. We've all been cautioned by the CDC to celebrate a socially distanced holidays this year, and the data shows most of us are ignoring them so far. I'm not here to lecture anyone about that -- but also you're all terrible people. I'm here to talk about what's different about this so-called "Third Wave", which has been going on since October. Specifically, there has been a stark Urban-Rural Divide , which has been wildly easy to see in the data. Rural areas, which managed to avoid a lot of the initial damage of COVID, are getting especially hammered now. And the data indicate they may not have the resources to deal with it. Urban-Rural Divide Measuring COVID One of the best ways to measure the ever-evolving conditions of COVID is daily new cases. This metric is unstable, so researchers typically take a moving average over a 5-7 day period instead. Daily