@tiggerdad we have some of the highest population densities in the nation. Bergen County is pretty dense in population. It was hit pretty hard from the get go. There were a few communities in lock down. I am 2 counties over from there and pretty much next to the westernmost counties which have less cases in general. However in population numbers, I think Bergen county is around 950,000 people, Hudson is about 700,000 people. Essex is around 800,000 people. Within an area of about 500 sq miles there is over 2,000,000 people. IIRC, you are in Mississippi, I had to look up size of your state which is just over 48,000 square miles with a population of just under 3 million. In Jersey terms, we have 2/3 of your state's population in about 1 percent of the area. NYC has about 8 million people in an area of just over 300 sq miles if I recall. Where I live, we have about 500,000 people in area of 1,000 sq miles. The county next us has about 100,000 people in 300 Sq miles. 140,000 within 500 sq miles. At one time, a town called Union City, NJ was the densest pop spot in the world running around near 60,000 people per square mile. Those number stood until the late 80s or early 90s when the far east took over in density.
I think this is the main reason why our rates or hot spot as you will is much greater than other places. Even other places such as Seattle do not have as much density substained as NYC. According to the latest population statistics it around 4 million for the metro area. 800,000 for Seattle proper. We have counties in NJ, that have that same population. NYC metro area is 20,000,000 or so.
This is one of the reasons why Covid has beaten us up a bit. Numbers to put it into prespective.