I thought you were making a point about death statistics, not about policy. Now I could be wrong, but I think that the timing and location of early hotspots is

I thought you were making a point about death statistics, not about policy. Now I could be wrong, but I think that the timing and location of early hotspots is pretty much random. Later, once the epidemic is firmly established in the population, the law of large numbers kicks in and statistics become more meaningful and predictive.