  COVID-19 is not a universal killer. We study the spread of COVID-19 at the
county level for the United States up until the 15$^{th}$ of August, 2020. We
show that the prevalence of the disease and the death rate are correlated with
the local socio-economic conditions often going beyond local population density
distributions, especially in rural areas. We correlate the COVID-19 prevalence
and death rate with data from the US Census Bureau and point out how the
spreading patterns of the disease show asymmetries in urban and rural areas
separately and are preferentially affecting the counties where a large fraction
of the population is non-white. Our findings can be used for more targeted
policy building and deployment of resources for future occurrence of a pandemic
due to SARS-CoV-2. Our methodology, based on interpretable machine learning and
game theory, can be extended to study the spread of other diseases.
