Yet while dense major cities are more likely entry points for disease, history shows suburbs and rural areas fare worse during airborne pandemics – and after.

 This title is a quote from the UC Davis Article on cities during pandemics regarding primarily what has happened historically during pandemics back to 1793 here in the U.S. and also around the world.

So, it appears to that though cities do badly during airborne pandemics  economically and in other ways suburbs and rural areas do much worse both in the short and long run.

Because in non-airborne diseases it is usually a human waste or water problem but in an airborne disease like we are presently dealing with this isn't the problem and instead the problem is more about being informed enough to modify your behavior enough to survive the pandemic. So, since city people tend to be far more educated than country people because they have more access to useful and good education both physically and financially suburbs and rural areas become more devastated than cities do in the short and long run regarding airborne pandemics.

In other words in the short and long run more people are going to die in suburban and rural areas than in the cities in the long run from airborne pandemics. And Suburban and Rural areas will also tend as a result to be more economically and psychologically harmed by an airborne pandemic too.

So, escaping the city now is useful but in the long run if you don't have your economic source of income secured it could be worse living in the suburban or rural areas than it is now in the future.