A study by MIT economist and physician Jeffrey E. Harris found that New York City’s subways were a major vector of the spread of COVID-19:
New York City’s multipronged subway system was a major disseminator – if not the principal transmission vehicle – of coronavirus infection during the initial takeoff of the massive epidemic that became evident throughout the city during March 2020. The near shutoff of subway ridership in Manhattan – down by over 90 percent at the end of March – correlates strongly with the substantial increase in the doubling time of new cases in this borough. Subway lines with the largest drop in ridership during the second and third weeks of March had the lowest subsequent rates of infection in the zip codes traversed by their routes. Maps of subway station turnstile entries, superimposed upon zip code-level maps of reported coronavirus incidence, are strongly consistent with subway-facilitated disease propagation. Reciprocal seeding of infection appears to be the best explanation for the emergence of a single hotspot in Midtown West in Manhattan.
When people point to the success that China had in controlling the spread of the virus, they generally ignore how tightly the country shut down transport to and from Wuhan and its environs as well as within the city.
I’ll just note that our local school district, with 30k students and staff, has had a grand total of 400 covid cases since August despite being mostly in-person.
To all those who said New York’s performance in the pandemic should be graded on a curve and be considered pretty good considering the circumstances.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9254511/New-York-State-Assembly-looking-RESCINDING-Governor-Andrew-Cuomos-emergency-powers.html
Fearing an ongoing DOJ investigation, the state government deliberately hid the number of deaths at nursing homes (which the Governor’s aides admitted are at least 50% higher than official figures).
And the cover up was successful (until now) because the state legislature had given dictatorial powers to the Governor.
Want to guess how many other things the New York State Executive hid from the feds, from their own legislature?
That’s a strategy we’re very familiar with here in Chicago: when you don’t like your stats, falsify them. Next question: why should we believe any of their reported statistics?
I read the aide’s statement. Not really clear what they did from what she actually said. From my POV it is important that they didnt hide total deaths, not so much where they died. Still, let’s have an investigation rather than unsubstantiated claims.
However, my point still stands. It isn’t especially profound or difficult to understand. In March people with the same age and risk factors died at about twice the rate of those past May. If another area of the country had the surge of cases first and the NYC area later their (NYC) number of deaths would have been cut in half. If the GA/SC/Fl corridor had their big surges in March their deaths would have been about doubled.
Steve