It seems the first point would be that putting too many people into too small a space will lead to the increased chances of disease sweeping through a concentrated population quickly. On the other side, spreading the population means spreading basic services out to meet the demand where it exists, when it exists. You can only have so many emergency responders on call, so dealing with a huge outbreak like this requires having excess capacity available all the time.
What about us?
According to Quora.com:
“3.79 million Chinese now living in the United States, 2.2 million were born in China, according to the report by the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN-DESA).”
That’s a lot more than 300,000. Now, we’re a much bigger country, but we also have a lot of foreign Chinese nationals working or going to school here. My Auburn University (where I used to teach) has many.
Agree as to why Italy was hard hit and where it was hit. But I came across some interesting data on Italy's annual death rates. So far in 2020 the countrywide death rate is not much different than what would be forecast. It continues an existing trend dating back many years.
If you look at the data, the jump in growth rates between 2018 and 2019 was greater than 2019 to 2020. And the death rates have been going up continuously for decades as the population ages. Basically, the deaths reputedly caused by the Wutan virus, have not appreciably affected the overall death rate in Italy. More people are dying annually in one of the oldest populations in the world.
There have been stories alleging that the Italians were attributing many of the deaths incorrectly to the virus despite the fact that many of the victims had other underlying causes that could have just as easily killed the person. Reporting of the deaths may be a major reason why Italy is such an anomaly.