While it's harsh to say: People die every day. The CDC officially states that, on average, ~880 people per 100,000 die every year in the United States (in 2017)

While it's harsh to say: People die every day. The CDC officially states that, on average, ~880 people per 100,000 die every year in the United States (in 2017). Extrapolating that to NYC, this means that the city can expect to loose about 0.1% of its population every year (possibly even more; I imagine some forms of death are more prevalent in large cities. Possibly less; healthcare is better). Yes, losing 2x+ the annual number in one quarter should be noticed. But, maybe the virus evolved additional transmissibility over time, or maybe it evolved to be a little more deadly. It simply seems less likely that this virus was first noticed in November, by China, yet it didn't hit major urban areas in the rest of the world for another four months. We're too interconnected as a species; nearly half a million people came to the US from China alone, after COVID-19 was classified there [1]. It feels more likely that people have been getting it, and dying from it, well before March; these cases were just simply miscategorized as the flu. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/04/us/coronavirus-china-travel-restrictions.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/04/us/coronavirus-china-trav...