No. Much like on economic issues, we will once again bail out the bumpkins to save them from themselves. There will be no lessons learned. They will go back to hating science and tax dollars funding healthcare until the next catastrophe when they need help again.

chimps like weapons and will gladly go to war with the peaceful bonobos, especially when resources become scarce.

Almost all kids from rural areas with any skill or talent move to a city. Constant brain drain.

Welp, time for the dog-shit political reporters to fan out to the nation’s Hateland and interview smug old white fucksticks on why they voted for Prezinazi AntiChrist.

Oh, the diners are all boarded up and bankrupt and everyone’s dead from the COVID. Wow, too bad.

"Rural America has yet to produce an Andrew Cuomo, the current icon of the urban response to the pandemic". Seriously? No wonder we are fucked. Cuomo's response was horrible. Not as bad as deBlasio or Trump, but Larry is still as stooge, even if isn't as stupid as Curly and Moe. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/08/cuomo-new-york-coronavirus/615352/, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/may/20/andrew-cuomo-new-york-coronavirus-catastrophe, https://www.propublica.org/article/two-coasts-one-virus-how-new-york-suffered-nearly-10-times-the-number-of-deaths-as-california, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/08/nyregion/new-york-coronavirus-response-delays.html. You get the idea. His response was terrible.

In comparison, DeWine (of Ohio) did a much better job. At least, until things went off the rails, which is the case in most of the country. California handled things fairly well, until about June. Now they have roughly three times as many deaths as the world average (despite the obvious advantages in health care, and the late onset). Oh, and here is an interesting little tidbit: West Virginia and Kentucky (states not known for their urban sophistication) have some of the best numbers in the U.S. Go figure

Sorry, but you just can't expect the general public (country boy, city slicker) to do the right thing. We are too fucking stupid. You need leadership from the government. The system is set up so that the federal government should handle it, but Trump is a fucking idiot (despite being born in New York City). When it came to handling the pandemic, the response by each state was independent of party or background. It wasn't until Trump politicized the issue (in part due to completely fucking up every aspect of the response) that the left/right, urban/rural divide arose.

Chimps and bonobos didn’t have Farmers Only and Seeking Arrangements.

@8 Will do ICE fan, racist wall builder, grocery customer, restaurant regular, hotel guest, landscaping user, moving van needer. Will do. Fuck, you guys are idiots.

Sociologists applying Darwinian theory to their particular field of study is foolhardy and rarely turns out well. The bonobo/chimp analogy is strained beyond credulity so as to be absurd and Darwin himself is, I would think, rolling his eyes in his grave.

Having said that, this a particularly fascinating data mining opportunity and I look forward to this whole damned thing being over so I can read about what specialists in various fields have leaned from it.

Fun read, though.

Tя☭mpanzees — besides being hateful, bigoted, racist, homophobic, misogynist, xenophobic — have gotta be the dimmest of the dim dumbshits ever to waddle the earth. Good riddance to bad trash! #DarwinCalling

On this election eve, I found this column strangely comforting. Also, apparently modern humans are too busy scrolling on their phones to have sexual relations. There is hope for Gaia yet.

@2 BG, exactly.

@6 Ross, well said! (though it was politicized from day one)

@5 Original Andrew: Those in the Deep Southern Fried Trumpland, largely because of Wal*Mart wiping out grocery stores and produce markets, live in an ever-expanding food desert. If they don't drop like flies from TRUMPVID-19, they'll either starve to death or collapse from advanced diabetes because of all the fast food access. That's the GOP for ya---fatten 'em, up, dumb 'em down, strip 'em of their affordable and accessible healthcare and Constitutional rights as U.S. citizens, give everything to the insanely wealthy who don't need it, and then blame everything all on the Democrats.
But where would the lil MAGAs be if they weren't out proudly fightin' fer their Free Dumbs?
But ....wait!.......what?

@8, @12: Please note that @11 is completely correct. Read it and weep:

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/06/how-white-house-coronavirus-response-went-wrong/613591/

Had we a real administration, we might have stopped this in China, or at least controlled it here in America. But we don't, thanks mostly to the Hillary-hating rural and conservative voters who are now dying in disproportionate numbers from COVID-19.

With any luck, Democrats win in massive nationwide landslides today, and in January we can begin the required remedial actions. (We might even keep the total number of deaths in the 1 million range, but that's too much to ask right now.)

Denying science has consequences. Electing an obviously incompetent fool does too.

The post sure is click bait for the nasty and bitter city people.

Any time somebody suggests that the group of people you don't like might actually be a different species, be afraid.

In light of the anti-mask prevalence in rural areas, I propose we stop calling it the sticks and instead call it the styx.

Seems more apropos.

@23 - the Styx is actually the summit of the Cascades.

And this evolutionary split argument is not only strained but based on wrong premises. There's no barrier between the populations. As some above have noted there is no shortage of kids from the rural areas heading to the cities. Less flow the other way but it happens.

There are probably some founder effects around. The European settler groups that initially came to parts of the West were pretty small. Utah is probably the best example. I don't know how much this has been studied.