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How many flights does NYC receive per day? How many does Seattle receive? The current state of both cities has nothing to do with what they did or didn't. Sa

How many flights does NYC receive per day? How many does Seattle receive? The current state of both cities has nothing to do with what they did or didn't. Same thing with Europe. The most affected countries are the most visited ones. Which also makes me question about the effectiveness of lockdowns.

rishirishi 6y ago
As I see it, lockdowns are not effective and were a massive mistake. You may find this epidemiologist's perspective to be interesting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfN2JWifLCY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfN2JWifLCY
- TimJRobinson 6y ago
  From looking at the current infection graphs Sweden is about to have a very bad time. When 99% of epidemiologists are saying one thing and you have to seek out a contrarion ask yourself if you're really being helpful or just trying to confirm your existing beliefs.
  - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
    That is an important question to ask, but I think in this case the answer is that it's helpful. That other 99% really don't seem to know for sure lockdowns are effective; the only arguments I've ever seen them present are "my model says they're effective" or "it would be strange in principle if they weren't". (Some laypeople draw dishonest comparisons to control measures for the Spanish Flu, but epidemiologists know that these measures didn't include orders to stay at home or close all businesses.)
  - mardifoufs 6y ago
    People have been saying that about Sweden for about 2 months now yet we still don't see any catastrophe happening there. Their hospitals are doing just fine, they aren't overwhelmed and there is no uncontrollable mortality. Why would Sweden suddenly do much worst now? It's curve has flattened and they are even closing emergency ICUs they setup but never had to use.
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    - NotSammyHagar 6y ago
      Sweden has a pop of about 10 mil, Switzerland has a pop of about 8.5 mil. Sweden is projected to have about 10,000 deaths, Switzerland under 2,000; accounting for their population differences, Sweden could have avoided 8,000 deaths if they had locked down. 8000! source is IHME, https://covid19.healthdata.org/sweden https://covid19.healthdata.org/sweden, https://covid19.healthdata.org/switzerland https://covid19.healthdata.org/switzerland. This also applies to the nordic countries like Denmark, Finland, Norway as compared to Sweden too. Sweden did start much more slowly that switzerland but they clearly are vastly underperforming in saving their citizens.
      - misja111 6y ago
        The death rate in Sweden is comparatively high but it is too simple to just blame it on their avoidance of a lockdown. You took Switzerland as an example, but if you would have taken Belgium, Sweden would do actually very well. Still, Belgium took quite strict lockdown measures and in a pretty early stage. What really seems to have had a significant result on keeping the death rate down, is testing: countries like Germany and Switzerland are testing often and early and have done so already in an early stage of the outbreak. This way they were able to treat patients early and to protect vulnerable patients against others in their surrounding that were infected.
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- user_50123890 6y ago
  Sweden has about 10 times more deaths than their neighbours. Oh and this is with 80% of the population in VOLUNTARY lockdown, their bars and restaurants are open sure but they're empty. The US would probably be at over a million deaths by now if life had continued normally without lockdowns.
  - rishirishi 6y ago
    There is also the likelihood of this virus to have already infected a large % of the population. Antibody tests will confirm that.
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  - mardifoufs 6y ago
    Norway doesn't count its deaths in the same way Sweden does and in any case Sweden's hospitals are not getting close to being overrun. Remember, curve flattening isn't about avoiding infections it's about spreading our rhe infection rates to allow the healthcare system to better cope. Also, Sweden is doing better than a lot of locked down countries so in any cade it's weird to only compare them to their immediate neighbors. Québec is similar to Sweden in a lot of ways but still has a higher mortality rate even if the province got hit a lot later than Sweden did
    - DanBC 6y ago
      Do you have links to the Norwegian and Swedish statistics showing what methods they're using please?
    - RickJWagner 6y ago
      I think we're all reasonable people here on HN. I also think we have many different ideas about what's best. (Again, all people I assume are smart.) This is just a hard scenario. There is no obvious 'best' answer. There may not even be a 'right' answer.
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graeme 6y ago
More specifically, NYC/NJ had lots of flights from the European epicenter. The west coast has more flights from Asia, which had a comparatively small number of cases.
- kaesar14 6y ago
  That's supposing that Chinese numbers are accurate. Which I don't believe.
- mlyle 6y ago
  I think that this breaks down when you look at the case progression. Likely west coast cities and NYC/NJ had similar case counts at the beginning of this, but made different interventions and had drastically different outcomes.
  - __s 6y ago
    Yep, in Canada British Columbia's case count was ahead of Ontario until mid March. Now the latter is an order of magnitude more severe
MR4D 6y ago
> The current state of both cities has nothing to do with what they did or didn't. I disagree. Specifically, Deblasio took forever to close the schools. I don’t live in NYC, and I remember when before they closed the schools wondering why they hadn’t done it yet. So some actions matter more than most.
- shawnz 6y ago
  Washington closed schools only 5 days before New York did (3 if you exclude weekends)
  - predictmktegirl 6y ago
    At the time, that was enough for "only" two doublings in cases at the projected rate of spread.
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- jfnixon 6y ago
  There is some evidence schools, and young children, are not spreading the disease. In SG, which did extensive contact tracing early on, there were no clusters associated with schools (apart from one where the cluster was in staff who had minimal contact with students). The early super spreader event from an SG conference resulted in a Covid-19 positive child, and not one case was attributed to this person. Anecdotal, not rigorous, but still evidence. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/21/boy-with-covid-19-did-not-transmit-disease-to-more-than-170-contacts https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/21/boy-with-covid...
  - DanBC 6y ago
    There's emerging data in the UK of a syndrome that's connected to covid-19 in children (but it may not be covid). Whatever it is it's not common, but a small percentage across a large population is a large number. The Paediatric Intensive Care society put out an alert (weirdly using Twitter to do so): https://twitter.com/PICSociety/status/1254508725227982848 https://twitter.com/PICSociety/status/1254508725227982848 https://www.hsj.co.uk/acute-care/exclusive-national-alert-as-coronavirus-related-condition-may-be-emerging-in-children/7027496.article https://www.hsj.co.uk/acute-care/exclusive-national-alert-as... https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52439005 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52439005
jdc 6y ago
> The current state of both cities has nothing to do with what they did or didn't. What's your source on that though?
- guscost 6y ago
  Nobody can back up any of these claims right now, it’s all belief and speculation. If someone says they have analyzed the outbreaks in Seattle and NYC and can control for all the differences between them, they’re delusional.
  - ghaff 6y ago
    As I've said before, I strongly suspect that when this is all over, there will be a heck of a lot of deviation in results that don't neatly align with a "stupid government" vs. "enlightened government" dichotomy. Although people will certainly try. The Northeast US is, at least in parts, some of the worst in the world that is known about and, other than being pretty dense, it really doesn't map to especially poor government response by reasonable definitions. Perfect hindsight doesn't count.
  - jdc 6y ago
    Seems reminiscent of astronomy with less accurate measurements.
bb2018 6y ago
I agree. de Blasio did terrible and Inslee acted way faster than Cuomo, but there is a reason that Buffalo is much better off than NYC even though they are both under the jurisdiction of New York law. Anyone who has lived in NYC as well as other cities knows just how different it is. My family is in New England. Massachusetts has 10x more deaths per capita than New Hampshire even though, if anything, Massachusetts has been a bit ahead in terms of closures and interventions.
- downerending 6y ago
  > Anyone who has lived in NYC [...] knows just how different it is. No one who's been to NYC can miss the fact that it's one of the filthiest places in America, from the perspective of disease possibilities. Many parts simply pile their trash on the curb and there are rats are everywhere. People pack into subway cars like sardines, and there's no way to avoid droplet transmission. During my time there, I saw several people vomit in public and just walk off. There are plenty of great things about the city, but lacking a real culture of cleanliness (e.g., Tokyo), density breeds disease.
  - crazygringo 6y ago
    Filthiness, trash and rats have zero to do with coronavirus. COVID-19 is spread principally by breathing, which is unaffected by cleanliness. And if you think people are packed into subway cars in New York... have you been to Tokyo? I'm not saying New York is a paragon of cleanliness, but you will have to show some scientific evidence that curbside trash pickup or the occasional subway rat has anything to do with the prevalence of modern-day diseases. Because they simply do not as common knowledge suggests. Modern diseases like colds and flus are spread through close contact in schools, office buildings and subways the exact same as they are every other major city on the planet.
    - downerending 6y ago
      The connection is that the residents have simply come to accept those conditions and many related ones that probably will turn out to be relevant. It's a culture. (no pun intended) I haven't been to Tokyo, but I have sat and watched groups of rats feast on curbside trash in Upper Manhattan. Many times. (And the roaches--ugh.)
jcims 6y ago
Here's some stats i dug up the last time when we were comparing LA to NYC...Seattle's differences are probably even more extreme. Sure they could have done better from a policy perspective, but the difference in outcome is not purely driven by policy and the stats between areas with widely divergent levels of transmission opportunity aren't really that comparable. -- 'More subway' doesn't really capture it. NYC has ~70x the daily ridership on metro rapid transit. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_rapid_transit_systems_by_ridership https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_rapid_tr... Overall population density is much higher as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_population_density https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b... NYC also has the lowest car ownership in the nation, so you're basically left with walking or uber/taxi/public transportation just to get to the store/doctor/etc. https://www.governing.com/gov-data/car-ownership-numbers-of-vehicles-by-city-map.html https://www.governing.com/gov-data/car-ownership-numbers-of-... Also ~25% more airline traffic hauling bugs in from everywhere. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_busiest_city_airport_systems_by_passenger_traffic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_busiest_city_airport_s... Combined with a long transmissable dwell time before symptoms, wouldn't surprise me if 90%+ of the people in NYC were materially exposed.
- graycat 6y ago
  > Combined with a long transmissable dwell time before symptoms, wouldn't surprise me if 90%+ of the people in NYC were materially exposed. Looks like you have a possibly important point: If so, then they would be well on the way to herd immunity and, thus, essentially at the end new cases and the end of the epidemic. So, for your point, at https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/04/23/andrew-cuomo-13-9-new-yorkers-tested-positive-coronavirus-antibodies-21-nyc/ https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/04/23/andrew-cuomo-1... is in part: "Andrew Cuomo: 13.9% of New Yorkers Tested Positive for Coronavirus Antibodies; 21% in NYC" The 21% is huge. So, it looks like the virus spread much faster than symptoms indicated and now ballpark 1/4th NYC has been "exposed" to the virus and is either infected without symptoms or recovered without ever having significant or any symptoms. Amazing. So, if want to accept the usual situation for viruses, then the 1/4 of the population soon can't get or transmit the virus. Ah, but wait; there's more: As at https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/in-four-us-state-prisons-nearly-3300-inmates-test-positive-for-coronavirus-96percent-without-symptoms/ar-BB13c1sD https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/in-four-us-state-prisons-n... is, call it an exploitation of a captive audience, > When the first cases of the new coronavirus surfaced in Ohio’s prisons, the director in charge felt like she was fighting a ghost. > “We weren’t always able to pinpoint where all the cases were coming from,” said Annette Chambers-Smith, director of the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction. As the virus spread, they began mass testing. > They started with the Marion Correctional Institution, which houses 2,500 prisoners in north central Ohio, many of them older with pre-existing health conditions. After testing 2,300 inmates for the coronavirus, they were shocked. Of the 2,028 who tested positive, close to 95% had no symptoms. > “It was very surprising,” said Chambers-Smith, who oversees the state’s 28 correctional facilities. and the article has more such data. Then if want to accept an estimate that 50% of the population immune means herd immunity, NYC is ballpark half way to herd immunity which would be close to the end of the epidemic. E.g., even people in NYC so far never exposed to the virus would not get infected even from infected new arrivals before they were recovered or dead. So, a guess is that the virus SARS-COV-2 is very strange in two respects: (1) It is astoundingly communicative, that is, spreads very easily and (2) has some huge fraction of people with the virus but without symptoms. A guess at an explanation: In NYC, the virus was often getting spread just via the air, e.g., via building central HVAC systems? The good news, if want to believe all such evidence and related common assumptions, is that we can get to a fraction of the population with immunity large enough to have herd immunity and, thus, essentially be well on the way to the end of the epidemic, all surprisingly quickly.
raz32dust 6y ago
> Which also makes me question about the effectiveness of lockdowns. Lockdowns are definitively, absolutely effective in curbing spread. It is backed by solid evidence of reduction is spread in places where lockdown was implemented, AND we have logical scientific reasoning to explain why. The only debatable aspect is whether they are the best solution, given all the trade-offs. And that is a difficult choice. But given no other solutions, if you can afford a lockdown, it is the right first step while you figure out other options. Countries have been able to avoid a lockdown if they have sufficient quarantine facilities, contact tracing and hospital capacity. But in the absence of these, lockdown is the most effective way to navigate this.
- rishirishi 6y ago
  Lockdowns were the wrong solution, imo. I think we've underestimated the spread pre-lockdown and the spread during lockdown (grocery stores etc.). We'll know once broad antibody tests are administered. But if the virus has already spread to 30, 40, heck 50 percent of the population, then what the heck are we doing in lockdown...
  - wtvanhest 6y ago
    So far, the highest estimates we are getting for antibodies are in the 20% range with dramatically flawed populations (NYC grocery). Real number is less than that and could be way less than that. Lockdowns create their own form of havoc, but I think they were the right decision at the time until we had more information. Now we need to figure a low risk way forward
    - hsitz 6y ago
      In addition, there's little doubt that the infection has spread far more widely in NYC area than elsewhere. The covid-19 death rate per capita in NYC is 3 to 20 times higher other areas of the U.S. So even if NYC area had 20% who had been infected, that would not mean the rest of the country was anywhere close to that; other areas would not be close to NYC infection rate unless there death rates were similar.
bigpumpkin 6y ago
Arguing against the short term effectiveness of lockdowns is like arguing against physics. If on average the number of people a person come in contact with decreases, it will definitely decrease the infection rate. The long term effect is arguable since we don't know if we can prevent the majority of people from getting infected.
- mkolodny 6y ago
  > The long term effect is arguable since we don't know if we can prevent the majority of people from getting infected. That's why the phrase "slow the spread" makes sense. Even if we can't prevent people from getting infected eventually, we can slow the spread enough that hospitals can handle incoming patients. If everyone gets infected at the same time, there won't be enough ventilators to treat everyone.
user_50123890 6y ago
It's actually suspected that the whole epidemic in Europe originated from the first confirmed infection in Germany. A woman from Shanghai who had a business trip with her car manufacturer. That same manufacturer happens to have a factory in northern Italy. Some Italian scientists did an RNA analysis on samples from infected people from Italy, and confirmed they descended from the first German case. Basically, if this hypothesis is true then German quarantine and/or exposure tracking failed. Had they played it safe and properly quarantined the entire staff of the office building , Europe's coronavirus pandemic might have gone entirely differently.
- lukastr0 6y ago
  > It's actually suspected that the whole epidemic in Europe originated from the first confirmed infection in Germany. According to virologist Dr. Drosten, this idea has been mostly disproven. Some scientists believed it initially but after more debate, the consensus has emerged that both Italy and Germany got their virus directly from Wuhan or Shanghai. Source (in German language): https://www.ndr.de/nachrichten/info/coronaskript174.pdf https://www.ndr.de/nachrichten/info/coronaskript174.pdf page 79
  - christkv 6y ago
    The Milan area hosts more than 100000 Chinese foreign workers. Madrid nearly 200000. How many came back from vacation in December and January taking the virus with them? I think this was seeded earlier than we think.
- jaynetics 6y ago
  Nextstrain has a nice graphical overview of virus pathways. It might well be that containment failed, and that a single person caused hundreds or thousands of the deaths in Italy, much like patient 31 in South Korea. On the other hand, without those extra deaths, authorities would simply have waited a bit longer with a lockdown, people would have acted as usual for longer, and the end result might just have been very similar with a delay of a few weeks.
gumby 6y ago
> How many flights does NYC receive per day? If you read the article you'll see that doesn't matter. By the time Seattle took action the disease was already widespread in the population at large. Other factors, like size, density, and use of public transport, are discussed in the article. > The most affected countries are the most visited ones. Which also makes me question about the effectiveness of lockdowns. The countries we have the best data on are developed countries. Again, read the discussion on the different tactics and approaches -- lockdown is only one of the issues.
6gvONxR4sf7o 6y ago
This just makes it worse. NYC is denser, more interconnected, more unqeual, more public transit oriented, and all these other things that make it high risk. Being a higher outbreak risk, they should have taken more precautions earlier, rather than fewer precautions later. The difference in number of cases in each region isn't the story. It couldn't be, precisely because these places are so different. The story is the differences how each region approached precautions. You'd hope NY, as a higher outbreak risk, would have been more cautious and more willing to listen to experts than Seattle.
mkolodny 6y ago
How many flights does South Dakota receive? A tiny number compared to NYC or Seattle. Yet, the state hasn't issued stay-at-home orders, and now they have a major outbreak.
- RickJWagner 6y ago
  I'm from South Dakota. So far, they've had 10 deaths. The total projected number of deaths through August 3rd is 93. New York is projected to suffer 23,232 deaths for the same time period. https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america/south-dakota https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america/sout...
- jfnixon 6y ago
  The Smithfield outbreak was in an essential industry factory (food production) which would not have been subject to a general lockdown.
metaphor 6y ago
> How many flights does NYC receive per day? Looking at 2019 passenger statistics for the big 3: JFK[1] = 62.6 MM LGA[2] = 31.1 MM EWR[3] = 46.3 MM Total = 140.0 MM > How many does Seattle receive? Equivalent 2019 metric for SEA[4] puts it at 51.8 MM. So as a ballpark measure, greater NYC process 3x more than SEA. The CDC[5] reports ~13k cases in WA, whereas NY alone is at ~267k cases; add another ~102k for nearby NJ. Extending the benefit of the doubt, that's ~20x positive incident for 3x flight activity. Even if we pretend that WA is under-reporting by a factor of 2, and half of NY cases are false positive, the argument still falls flat on its face...keep in mind, NJ isn't even being accounted for in this thought experiment. [1] https://www.panynj.gov/content/dam/airports/statistics/statistics-general-info/monthly-2019/JFK_DEC_2019.pdf https://www.panynj.gov/content/dam/airports/statistics/stati... [2] https://www.panynj.gov/content/dam/airports/statistics/statistics-general-info/monthly-2019/LGA_DEC_2019.pdf https://www.panynj.gov/content/dam/airports/statistics/stati... [3] https://www.panynj.gov/content/dam/airports/statistics/statistics-general-info/monthly-2019/EWR_DEC_2019.pdf https://www.panynj.gov/content/dam/airports/statistics/stati... [4] https://www.portseattle.org/page/airport-statistics https://www.portseattle.org/page/airport-statistics [5] https://www.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/index.html
- formercoder 6y ago
  It’s not the sole metric you’d need to regress against. Once those folks get off the plane they are in much closer contact with the rest of the population.
  - metaphor 6y ago
    Now extend Tokyo an ounce of consideration in this context.
- notacoward 6y ago
  While I don't dispute the overall conclusion that Seattle handled things better, it's important to remember that infection is not a simple linear process. 3x the passengers does not necessarily mean 3x the cases. It means ~3x the chance of superspreader events directly from passengers, plus a higher chance of such events happening indirectly, and those events tend to be multiplicative rather than additive. On the other hand, it increases the chance that some people will be exposed via multiple paths but counted at most once. So 20x the cases seems a bit high, but 3x would be remarkably low.
jorblumesea 6y ago
King County has had ~400 confirmed COVID deaths while NYC has had ~12,000. Number of flights, population, all that stuff doesn't explain a x30 increase in deaths. If you read the article, they largely discuss NYC's inability to arrive a decision promptly, which allowed things to spread. Also, resistance to the idea of social distancing looks like it made things much worse. It's like everyone who is commenting here didn't even read the article and is just spouting opinions.
sub7 6y ago
If you don't think lockdowns have dramatically reduced the number of infections, you are incorrect. More visitors may kick off more chains of infection (so higher numbers) but that's just linear growth. Stopping exponential spread is what prevented something far worse than what we have seen.
- jfnixon 6y ago
  We don't even know the order of magnitude of the infection count, and you are making claims about how the lockdown is reducing them? That's not reason, that's faith.
asdff 6y ago
LAX is the port of entry for most of the asian world in the US and LA is doing far better than NYC due to leadership choices alone.

rishirishi 6y ago

As I see it, lockdowns are not effective and were a massive mistake. You may find this epidemiologist's perspective to be interesting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfN2JWifLCY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfN2JWifLCY

TimJRobinson 6y ago
From looking at the current infection graphs Sweden is about to have a very bad time. When 99% of epidemiologists are saying one thing and you have to seek out a contrarion ask yourself if you're really being helpful or just trying to confirm your existing beliefs.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
  That is an important question to ask, but I think in this case the answer is that it's helpful. That other 99% really don't seem to know for sure lockdowns are effective; the only arguments I've ever seen them present are "my model says they're effective" or "it would be strange in principle if they weren't". (Some laypeople draw dishonest comparisons to control measures for the Spanish Flu, but epidemiologists know that these measures didn't include orders to stay at home or close all businesses.)
- mardifoufs 6y ago
  People have been saying that about Sweden for about 2 months now yet we still don't see any catastrophe happening there. Their hospitals are doing just fine, they aren't overwhelmed and there is no uncontrollable mortality. Why would Sweden suddenly do much worst now? It's curve has flattened and they are even closing emergency ICUs they setup but never had to use.
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  - NotSammyHagar 6y ago
    Sweden has a pop of about 10 mil, Switzerland has a pop of about 8.5 mil. Sweden is projected to have about 10,000 deaths, Switzerland under 2,000; accounting for their population differences, Sweden could have avoided 8,000 deaths if they had locked down. 8000! source is IHME, https://covid19.healthdata.org/sweden https://covid19.healthdata.org/sweden, https://covid19.healthdata.org/switzerland https://covid19.healthdata.org/switzerland. This also applies to the nordic countries like Denmark, Finland, Norway as compared to Sweden too. Sweden did start much more slowly that switzerland but they clearly are vastly underperforming in saving their citizens.
    - misja111 6y ago
      The death rate in Sweden is comparatively high but it is too simple to just blame it on their avoidance of a lockdown. You took Switzerland as an example, but if you would have taken Belgium, Sweden would do actually very well. Still, Belgium took quite strict lockdown measures and in a pretty early stage. What really seems to have had a significant result on keeping the death rate down, is testing: countries like Germany and Switzerland are testing often and early and have done so already in an early stage of the outbreak. This way they were able to treat patients early and to protect vulnerable patients against others in their surrounding that were infected.
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user_50123890 6y ago
Sweden has about 10 times more deaths than their neighbours. Oh and this is with 80% of the population in VOLUNTARY lockdown, their bars and restaurants are open sure but they're empty. The US would probably be at over a million deaths by now if life had continued normally without lockdowns.
- rishirishi 6y ago
  There is also the likelihood of this virus to have already infected a large % of the population. Antibody tests will confirm that.
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- mardifoufs 6y ago
  Norway doesn't count its deaths in the same way Sweden does and in any case Sweden's hospitals are not getting close to being overrun. Remember, curve flattening isn't about avoiding infections it's about spreading our rhe infection rates to allow the healthcare system to better cope. Also, Sweden is doing better than a lot of locked down countries so in any cade it's weird to only compare them to their immediate neighbors. Québec is similar to Sweden in a lot of ways but still has a higher mortality rate even if the province got hit a lot later than Sweden did
  - DanBC 6y ago
    Do you have links to the Norwegian and Swedish statistics showing what methods they're using please?
  - RickJWagner 6y ago
    I think we're all reasonable people here on HN. I also think we have many different ideas about what's best. (Again, all people I assume are smart.) This is just a hard scenario. There is no obvious 'best' answer. There may not even be a 'right' answer.
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graeme 6y ago

More specifically, NYC/NJ had lots of flights from the European epicenter. The west coast has more flights from Asia, which had a comparatively small number of cases.

kaesar14 6y ago
That's supposing that Chinese numbers are accurate. Which I don't believe.
mlyle 6y ago
I think that this breaks down when you look at the case progression. Likely west coast cities and NYC/NJ had similar case counts at the beginning of this, but made different interventions and had drastically different outcomes.
- __s 6y ago
  Yep, in Canada British Columbia's case count was ahead of Ontario until mid March. Now the latter is an order of magnitude more severe

MR4D 6y ago

> The current state of both cities has nothing to do with what they did or didn't. I disagree. Specifically, Deblasio took forever to close the schools. I don’t live in NYC, and I remember when before they closed the schools wondering why they hadn’t done it yet. So some actions matter more than most.

shawnz 6y ago
Washington closed schools only 5 days before New York did (3 if you exclude weekends)
- predictmktegirl 6y ago
  At the time, that was enough for "only" two doublings in cases at the projected rate of spread.
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jfnixon 6y ago
There is some evidence schools, and young children, are not spreading the disease. In SG, which did extensive contact tracing early on, there were no clusters associated with schools (apart from one where the cluster was in staff who had minimal contact with students). The early super spreader event from an SG conference resulted in a Covid-19 positive child, and not one case was attributed to this person. Anecdotal, not rigorous, but still evidence. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/21/boy-with-covid-19-did-not-transmit-disease-to-more-than-170-contacts https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/21/boy-with-covid...
- DanBC 6y ago
  There's emerging data in the UK of a syndrome that's connected to covid-19 in children (but it may not be covid). Whatever it is it's not common, but a small percentage across a large population is a large number. The Paediatric Intensive Care society put out an alert (weirdly using Twitter to do so): https://twitter.com/PICSociety/status/1254508725227982848 https://twitter.com/PICSociety/status/1254508725227982848 https://www.hsj.co.uk/acute-care/exclusive-national-alert-as-coronavirus-related-condition-may-be-emerging-in-children/7027496.article https://www.hsj.co.uk/acute-care/exclusive-national-alert-as... https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52439005 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52439005

jdc 6y ago

> The current state of both cities has nothing to do with what they did or didn't. What's your source on that though?

guscost 6y ago
Nobody can back up any of these claims right now, it’s all belief and speculation. If someone says they have analyzed the outbreaks in Seattle and NYC and can control for all the differences between them, they’re delusional.
- ghaff 6y ago
  As I've said before, I strongly suspect that when this is all over, there will be a heck of a lot of deviation in results that don't neatly align with a "stupid government" vs. "enlightened government" dichotomy. Although people will certainly try. The Northeast US is, at least in parts, some of the worst in the world that is known about and, other than being pretty dense, it really doesn't map to especially poor government response by reasonable definitions. Perfect hindsight doesn't count.
- jdc 6y ago
  Seems reminiscent of astronomy with less accurate measurements.

bb2018 6y ago

I agree. de Blasio did terrible and Inslee acted way faster than Cuomo, but there is a reason that Buffalo is much better off than NYC even though they are both under the jurisdiction of New York law. Anyone who has lived in NYC as well as other cities knows just how different it is. My family is in New England. Massachusetts has 10x more deaths per capita than New Hampshire even though, if anything, Massachusetts has been a bit ahead in terms of closures and interventions.

downerending 6y ago
> Anyone who has lived in NYC [...] knows just how different it is. No one who's been to NYC can miss the fact that it's one of the filthiest places in America, from the perspective of disease possibilities. Many parts simply pile their trash on the curb and there are rats are everywhere. People pack into subway cars like sardines, and there's no way to avoid droplet transmission. During my time there, I saw several people vomit in public and just walk off. There are plenty of great things about the city, but lacking a real culture of cleanliness (e.g., Tokyo), density breeds disease.
- crazygringo 6y ago
  Filthiness, trash and rats have zero to do with coronavirus. COVID-19 is spread principally by breathing, which is unaffected by cleanliness. And if you think people are packed into subway cars in New York... have you been to Tokyo? I'm not saying New York is a paragon of cleanliness, but you will have to show some scientific evidence that curbside trash pickup or the occasional subway rat has anything to do with the prevalence of modern-day diseases. Because they simply do not as common knowledge suggests. Modern diseases like colds and flus are spread through close contact in schools, office buildings and subways the exact same as they are every other major city on the planet.
  - downerending 6y ago
    The connection is that the residents have simply come to accept those conditions and many related ones that probably will turn out to be relevant. It's a culture. (no pun intended) I haven't been to Tokyo, but I have sat and watched groups of rats feast on curbside trash in Upper Manhattan. Many times. (And the roaches--ugh.)

jcims 6y ago

Here's some stats i dug up the last time when we were comparing LA to NYC...Seattle's differences are probably even more extreme. Sure they could have done better from a policy perspective, but the difference in outcome is not purely driven by policy and the stats between areas with widely divergent levels of transmission opportunity aren't really that comparable. -- 'More subway' doesn't really capture it. NYC has ~70x the daily ridership on metro rapid transit. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_rapid_transit_systems_by_ridership https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_rapid_tr... Overall population density is much higher as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_population_density https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b... NYC also has the lowest car ownership in the nation, so you're basically left with walking or uber/taxi/public transportation just to get to the store/doctor/etc. https://www.governing.com/gov-data/car-ownership-numbers-of-vehicles-by-city-map.html https://www.governing.com/gov-data/car-ownership-numbers-of-... Also ~25% more airline traffic hauling bugs in from everywhere. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_busiest_city_airport_systems_by_passenger_traffic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_busiest_city_airport_s... Combined with a long transmissable dwell time before symptoms, wouldn't surprise me if 90%+ of the people in NYC were materially exposed.

graycat 6y ago
> Combined with a long transmissable dwell time before symptoms, wouldn't surprise me if 90%+ of the people in NYC were materially exposed. Looks like you have a possibly important point: If so, then they would be well on the way to herd immunity and, thus, essentially at the end new cases and the end of the epidemic. So, for your point, at https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/04/23/andrew-cuomo-13-9-new-yorkers-tested-positive-coronavirus-antibodies-21-nyc/ https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/04/23/andrew-cuomo-1... is in part: "Andrew Cuomo: 13.9% of New Yorkers Tested Positive for Coronavirus Antibodies; 21% in NYC" The 21% is huge. So, it looks like the virus spread much faster than symptoms indicated and now ballpark 1/4th NYC has been "exposed" to the virus and is either infected without symptoms or recovered without ever having significant or any symptoms. Amazing. So, if want to accept the usual situation for viruses, then the 1/4 of the population soon can't get or transmit the virus. Ah, but wait; there's more: As at https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/in-four-us-state-prisons-nearly-3300-inmates-test-positive-for-coronavirus-96percent-without-symptoms/ar-BB13c1sD https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/in-four-us-state-prisons-n... is, call it an exploitation of a captive audience, > When the first cases of the new coronavirus surfaced in Ohio’s prisons, the director in charge felt like she was fighting a ghost. > “We weren’t always able to pinpoint where all the cases were coming from,” said Annette Chambers-Smith, director of the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction. As the virus spread, they began mass testing. > They started with the Marion Correctional Institution, which houses 2,500 prisoners in north central Ohio, many of them older with pre-existing health conditions. After testing 2,300 inmates for the coronavirus, they were shocked. Of the 2,028 who tested positive, close to 95% had no symptoms. > “It was very surprising,” said Chambers-Smith, who oversees the state’s 28 correctional facilities. and the article has more such data. Then if want to accept an estimate that 50% of the population immune means herd immunity, NYC is ballpark half way to herd immunity which would be close to the end of the epidemic. E.g., even people in NYC so far never exposed to the virus would not get infected even from infected new arrivals before they were recovered or dead. So, a guess is that the virus SARS-COV-2 is very strange in two respects: (1) It is astoundingly communicative, that is, spreads very easily and (2) has some huge fraction of people with the virus but without symptoms. A guess at an explanation: In NYC, the virus was often getting spread just via the air, e.g., via building central HVAC systems? The good news, if want to believe all such evidence and related common assumptions, is that we can get to a fraction of the population with immunity large enough to have herd immunity and, thus, essentially be well on the way to the end of the epidemic, all surprisingly quickly.

raz32dust 6y ago

> Which also makes me question about the effectiveness of lockdowns. Lockdowns are definitively, absolutely effective in curbing spread. It is backed by solid evidence of reduction is spread in places where lockdown was implemented, AND we have logical scientific reasoning to explain why. The only debatable aspect is whether they are the best solution, given all the trade-offs. And that is a difficult choice. But given no other solutions, if you can afford a lockdown, it is the right first step while you figure out other options. Countries have been able to avoid a lockdown if they have sufficient quarantine facilities, contact tracing and hospital capacity. But in the absence of these, lockdown is the most effective way to navigate this.

rishirishi 6y ago
Lockdowns were the wrong solution, imo. I think we've underestimated the spread pre-lockdown and the spread during lockdown (grocery stores etc.). We'll know once broad antibody tests are administered. But if the virus has already spread to 30, 40, heck 50 percent of the population, then what the heck are we doing in lockdown...
- wtvanhest 6y ago
  So far, the highest estimates we are getting for antibodies are in the 20% range with dramatically flawed populations (NYC grocery). Real number is less than that and could be way less than that. Lockdowns create their own form of havoc, but I think they were the right decision at the time until we had more information. Now we need to figure a low risk way forward
  - hsitz 6y ago
    In addition, there's little doubt that the infection has spread far more widely in NYC area than elsewhere. The covid-19 death rate per capita in NYC is 3 to 20 times higher other areas of the U.S. So even if NYC area had 20% who had been infected, that would not mean the rest of the country was anywhere close to that; other areas would not be close to NYC infection rate unless there death rates were similar.

bigpumpkin 6y ago

Arguing against the short term effectiveness of lockdowns is like arguing against physics. If on average the number of people a person come in contact with decreases, it will definitely decrease the infection rate. The long term effect is arguable since we don't know if we can prevent the majority of people from getting infected.

mkolodny 6y ago
> The long term effect is arguable since we don't know if we can prevent the majority of people from getting infected. That's why the phrase "slow the spread" makes sense. Even if we can't prevent people from getting infected eventually, we can slow the spread enough that hospitals can handle incoming patients. If everyone gets infected at the same time, there won't be enough ventilators to treat everyone.

user_50123890 6y ago

It's actually suspected that the whole epidemic in Europe originated from the first confirmed infection in Germany. A woman from Shanghai who had a business trip with her car manufacturer. That same manufacturer happens to have a factory in northern Italy. Some Italian scientists did an RNA analysis on samples from infected people from Italy, and confirmed they descended from the first German case. Basically, if this hypothesis is true then German quarantine and/or exposure tracking failed. Had they played it safe and properly quarantined the entire staff of the office building , Europe's coronavirus pandemic might have gone entirely differently.

lukastr0 6y ago
> It's actually suspected that the whole epidemic in Europe originated from the first confirmed infection in Germany. According to virologist Dr. Drosten, this idea has been mostly disproven. Some scientists believed it initially but after more debate, the consensus has emerged that both Italy and Germany got their virus directly from Wuhan or Shanghai. Source (in German language): https://www.ndr.de/nachrichten/info/coronaskript174.pdf https://www.ndr.de/nachrichten/info/coronaskript174.pdf page 79
- christkv 6y ago
  The Milan area hosts more than 100000 Chinese foreign workers. Madrid nearly 200000. How many came back from vacation in December and January taking the virus with them? I think this was seeded earlier than we think.
jaynetics 6y ago
Nextstrain has a nice graphical overview of virus pathways. It might well be that containment failed, and that a single person caused hundreds or thousands of the deaths in Italy, much like patient 31 in South Korea. On the other hand, without those extra deaths, authorities would simply have waited a bit longer with a lockdown, people would have acted as usual for longer, and the end result might just have been very similar with a delay of a few weeks.

gumby 6y ago

> How many flights does NYC receive per day? If you read the article you'll see that doesn't matter. By the time Seattle took action the disease was already widespread in the population at large. Other factors, like size, density, and use of public transport, are discussed in the article. > The most affected countries are the most visited ones. Which also makes me question about the effectiveness of lockdowns. The countries we have the best data on are developed countries. Again, read the discussion on the different tactics and approaches -- lockdown is only one of the issues.

6gvONxR4sf7o 6y ago

This just makes it worse. NYC is denser, more interconnected, more unqeual, more public transit oriented, and all these other things that make it high risk. Being a higher outbreak risk, they should have taken more precautions earlier, rather than fewer precautions later. The difference in number of cases in each region isn't the story. It couldn't be, precisely because these places are so different. The story is the differences how each region approached precautions. You'd hope NY, as a higher outbreak risk, would have been more cautious and more willing to listen to experts than Seattle.

mkolodny 6y ago

How many flights does South Dakota receive? A tiny number compared to NYC or Seattle. Yet, the state hasn't issued stay-at-home orders, and now they have a major outbreak.

RickJWagner 6y ago
I'm from South Dakota. So far, they've had 10 deaths. The total projected number of deaths through August 3rd is 93. New York is projected to suffer 23,232 deaths for the same time period. https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america/south-dakota https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america/sout...
jfnixon 6y ago
The Smithfield outbreak was in an essential industry factory (food production) which would not have been subject to a general lockdown.

metaphor 6y ago

> How many flights does NYC receive per day? Looking at 2019 passenger statistics for the big 3: JFK[1] = 62.6 MM LGA[2] = 31.1 MM EWR[3] = 46.3 MM Total = 140.0 MM > How many does Seattle receive? Equivalent 2019 metric for SEA[4] puts it at 51.8 MM. So as a ballpark measure, greater NYC process 3x more than SEA. The CDC[5] reports ~13k cases in WA, whereas NY alone is at ~267k cases; add another ~102k for nearby NJ. Extending the benefit of the doubt, that's ~20x positive incident for 3x flight activity. Even if we pretend that WA is under-reporting by a factor of 2, and half of NY cases are false positive, the argument still falls flat on its face...keep in mind, NJ isn't even being accounted for in this thought experiment. [1] https://www.panynj.gov/content/dam/airports/statistics/statistics-general-info/monthly-2019/JFK_DEC_2019.pdf https://www.panynj.gov/content/dam/airports/statistics/stati... [2] https://www.panynj.gov/content/dam/airports/statistics/statistics-general-info/monthly-2019/LGA_DEC_2019.pdf https://www.panynj.gov/content/dam/airports/statistics/stati... [3] https://www.panynj.gov/content/dam/airports/statistics/statistics-general-info/monthly-2019/EWR_DEC_2019.pdf https://www.panynj.gov/content/dam/airports/statistics/stati... [4] https://www.portseattle.org/page/airport-statistics https://www.portseattle.org/page/airport-statistics [5] https://www.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/index.html

formercoder 6y ago
It’s not the sole metric you’d need to regress against. Once those folks get off the plane they are in much closer contact with the rest of the population.
- metaphor 6y ago
  Now extend Tokyo an ounce of consideration in this context.
notacoward 6y ago
While I don't dispute the overall conclusion that Seattle handled things better, it's important to remember that infection is not a simple linear process. 3x the passengers does not necessarily mean 3x the cases. It means ~3x the chance of superspreader events directly from passengers, plus a higher chance of such events happening indirectly, and those events tend to be multiplicative rather than additive. On the other hand, it increases the chance that some people will be exposed via multiple paths but counted at most once. So 20x the cases seems a bit high, but 3x would be remarkably low.

jorblumesea 6y ago

King County has had ~400 confirmed COVID deaths while NYC has had ~12,000. Number of flights, population, all that stuff doesn't explain a x30 increase in deaths. If you read the article, they largely discuss NYC's inability to arrive a decision promptly, which allowed things to spread. Also, resistance to the idea of social distancing looks like it made things much worse. It's like everyone who is commenting here didn't even read the article and is just spouting opinions.

sub7 6y ago

If you don't think lockdowns have dramatically reduced the number of infections, you are incorrect. More visitors may kick off more chains of infection (so higher numbers) but that's just linear growth. Stopping exponential spread is what prevented something far worse than what we have seen.

jfnixon 6y ago
We don't even know the order of magnitude of the infection count, and you are making claims about how the lockdown is reducing them? That's not reason, that's faith.

asdff 6y ago

LAX is the port of entry for most of the asian world in the US and LA is doing far better than NYC due to leadership choices alone.