Our analysis reveals that it is rarely just one feature that exposes a county to a higher than average COVID-19 death rate. Rather, it is usually a combination of features which when true at the same time provide a vivid narrative of these fateful circumstances.
In most cases, the number of features required to sufficiently describe a pattern is just a few. This makes them easy to explain, leading to a better understanding of the hidden processes and relations. Essentially, each pattern is a knowledge facet told in the domain’s language.
In May, our AI algorithm automatically identified 297 sets of US counties. We found that 985 US counties are at high risk, and Mississippi, Louisiana, and Georgia have the highest density of high-risk counties at a coverage of 80-90%. These numbers have changed somewhat as the pandemic raged on.