Before revision:  In contrast, death metrics showed near constant behaviour in scaling, variance, and skewness metrics over the full period with rural regions preferentially affected, an observation consistent with regional age demographics in England and Wales  .
After revision:  In contrast, death metrics showed near constant behaviour in scaling, variance, and skewness metrics over the full period with rural regions preferentially affected, an observation consistent with regional age demographics in England and Wales . Regional positions relative to density scaling laws were remarkably persistent after the first 5-9 days of the available data set. The determinants of this persistent behaviour probably precede the pandemic and remain unchanged .