Population density doesn’t work that way. Viruses don’t care about how much empty area there is in a country. Take Greenland for example. Population density is

Population density doesn’t work that way. Viruses don’t care about how much empty area there is in a country. Take Greenland for example. Population density is.. zero. But zoom in and you’ll see they live quite densely. The number of contacts matter. This comes down to many factors like urbanization, how advanced the economy is (how large fraction can isolate and work?), family sizes/structures etc. Raw density is correlated to this, but on a country level it’s almost useless because some countries have all their people in a few areas. Netherlands is pretty special in not having vast wilderness and that’s why it’s dense. But that doesn’t change the fact that a Dutch city looks and functions like almost other European cities. If I were to guess I’d say a bigger differentiator between (say) Amsterdam and most other comparable cities in regards to diseases would be the bike culture that means thousands get to work without having to use public transport.