American counties worst affected by coronavirus as of 3/20/20

 The chart shows the ten worst affected counties in the US, with badly hit areas of China and Italy included for comparison.

The worst hit region in the US is the central Colorado ski region around Aspen and Vail Colorado. This is shown in the chart as Eagle County, Gunnison County and Pitkin County in the state of Colorado. Although the absolute number of cases is under 100 these are small towns with a very high per capita rate of cases.

The next worst hit area is the New York Metro area with Westchester County as the worst affected region. New York City, Nassau and Bergen county New Jersey are also in the New York metro area.

There are also nasty outbreaks around New Orleans (Orleans Parish) and Seattle (King and Snohomish Counties). Things have slowed down in the San Francisco Bay Area over the past couple of days, so no Bay Area counties make the chart.

In my opinion, there is a good chance that the outbreaks in New York and New Orleans become as severe as the outbreak in Northern Italy.