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You have to be careful with what you look at in the US. The media here is definitely cherry picking the worst of the worst to show people. Were some places hit

You have to be careful with what you look at in the US. The media here is definitely cherry picking the worst of the worst to show people. Were some places hit really hard? Yes. Absolutely. Does the entire country look like NYC? No. Not even close.

couchand 6y ago
Hey, even the outer boroughs seem more-or-less normal. It's just Manhattan that looks post-apocalyptic, and even there it depends greatly on the neighborhood.
- TremendousJudge 6y ago
  but the pictures on the article are from San Francisco?
- kerkeslager 6y ago
  I live 90 minutes outside Manhattan, upstate. Things aren't normal here. I can definitely see how one might mistake things for being normal because businesses are opening up and people are going outside, but if you look more closely, about half of the shops and restaurants remain closed, and the places that are open are operating at half-capacity. If you talk to the business owners, things are rough. Some local businesses aren't staying open because they're making money, they're staying open because they lose less money by being open (which is a big difference). The hope is that they'll be able to start operating profitably again, but that's far from guaranteed. I really doubt that we have insight yet into how this is going to play out.
kerkeslager 6y ago
There is a very clear division between people in my friend group who know someone who has died of Covid, and people who don't. The majority of the people from the former group live in NY, the majority of the people in the latter group don't. NYC, due to its population density, certainly has a higher potential for pandemic death than anywhere else in the US, but there's good reason to believe that NY didn't reach anywhere near that potential, due to the interventions taken by the community which prevented that from happening. We see much worse infection and death rates in some areas of the world with less dense population, due to different responses. So there's no reason to believe that the rest of the US can't get just as bad as NYC, and worse. And given the almost complete lack of response in some parts of the US, I think we'll get to see what that looks like; if not in the next few weeks, then in the fall when cold weather hits.

couchand 6y ago

Hey, even the outer boroughs seem more-or-less normal. It's just Manhattan that looks post-apocalyptic, and even there it depends greatly on the neighborhood.

TremendousJudge 6y ago
but the pictures on the article are from San Francisco?
kerkeslager 6y ago
I live 90 minutes outside Manhattan, upstate. Things aren't normal here. I can definitely see how one might mistake things for being normal because businesses are opening up and people are going outside, but if you look more closely, about half of the shops and restaurants remain closed, and the places that are open are operating at half-capacity. If you talk to the business owners, things are rough. Some local businesses aren't staying open because they're making money, they're staying open because they lose less money by being open (which is a big difference). The hope is that they'll be able to start operating profitably again, but that's far from guaranteed. I really doubt that we have insight yet into how this is going to play out.

kerkeslager 6y ago

There is a very clear division between people in my friend group who know someone who has died of Covid, and people who don't. The majority of the people from the former group live in NY, the majority of the people in the latter group don't. NYC, due to its population density, certainly has a higher potential for pandemic death than anywhere else in the US, but there's good reason to believe that NY didn't reach anywhere near that potential, due to the interventions taken by the community which prevented that from happening. We see much worse infection and death rates in some areas of the world with less dense population, due to different responses. So there's no reason to believe that the rest of the US can't get just as bad as NYC, and worse. And given the almost complete lack of response in some parts of the US, I think we'll get to see what that looks like; if not in the next few weeks, then in the fall when cold weather hits.