There is a more or less useful set of measures including population, land area, population density (sometimes known as urbanization) and so on

used to assert demographic similarity between geographic and political entities. When applied to California counties such a cluster analysis groups

together Tehama, San Benito, Lake, Tuolumne, Calaveras, Siskiyou and Amador counties (see below), all with populations between 40,000 and  

80,000 people. Note that California's 58 counties are quite diverse - with 10,000,000 people Los Angeles County is home to one in four

Californians, while Alpine County has barely 1,200 people.

While there are multiple epidemics raging on our Planet Earth, the one which is currently getting the most attention is often known as COVID-19.

Regrettably, there are many differences in how cases, deaths, hospitalizations and vaccinations are reported. These will be passed over in silence -

the following bar charts give cases and deaths for Amador and Calaveras counties, the state of California and the United States of America as of

November 30, 2021. Readers uninterested in COVID-19 epidemiology may click here to go to the next topic