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Comment by devy | Hacker News Reader

California's population density cannot compare to Downstate New York, so there are some advantages to implement social distancing measures in CA than in NY/NYC.

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NYC has the highest population density in the US, and yet Cuomo is fighting against stronger measures in NYC proposed by Mayor De Blasio.

It's a difficult decision to be made. On one hand, short term strong measure will guarantee unemployment and bankruptcies and potentially long term economic impact (talk about another the Great Depression). On the other hand, inaction will inevitably cause millions of deaths including young people. It's a chilling effect to see that "the point of no return" date was already past last week for NY. Very very disturbing. I live in NYC metro and has never been so frightened and furious in my life of 40 years, knowing that in a few weeks/months myself, myself, my family or my friends and colleague could potentially die, all due to 2 months of Federal Government's inaction.

I can't remember the last time I logged in.

I live in in Crown Heights, Brooklyn and I don't want belittle the gravity of the situation at all because we have seen seen 3 obituary entries (all elderly) and have a number of other people who we are praying for in precarious situations.

But your comment strikes me as something out dystopian sci-fi. Our volunteer ems reps as of 4 days ago estimated that 80% of the community had been infected and anecdotally it seems now higher than than that. I do not know anyone who has not had flu like symptoms in the past week. Obviously, that means that I along with my entire immediate family have been slowly recovering from sometimes flue like this past week and G-d willing will feel good again in the next day or days.

And I know that other communities in Brooklyn and upstate NY have similar infection saturation. Thus the official infection numbers are off by factors of 10 which means the death and hospitalization rates are significantly overstated. The danger is in the absolute numbers.

I don't know what to make of all this other than that some large communities have peaked and aren't seeing death in streets as it were.

There's every reason to hope and good reasons to believe that the distancing measures now in effect will give NY the time to ramp up the health care system to accommodate those most badly affected.

I hope someone found something useful in this comment.

To add some clarification here, I think he is referring to infection rates in the Hassidic community (Crown Heights has a large Hasidic population) in Brooklyn and in upstate New York Hasdic enclaves.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/18/nyregion/Coronavirus-broo...

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/17/nyregion/coronavirus-hasi...

Reddit comments:

https://www.reddit.com/r/nyc/comments/fkhgv0/defying_rules_l...

I find this somewhat encouraging.

If the Hasidem aren't dropping dead...well, draw your own conclusions. Yes, I am well aware that they might start dropping dead in the next few weeks.

I think you are missing one important factor in why so many people are trying to block it. The more people who get it, the more some percentage will develop an infection serious enough to cause them to seek hospital care and some large fraction will need respiration. Most people will not get that sick. So it might feel like why are we panicing over this since we just get sick for a week and then we are over it.

It's because of what happened in Italy, too many people for the hospitals all at once. People over 45 don't get treated, they let them die, as the doctors say in their terrible reports. Washington state is facing the edge of this right now. They delayed all elective surgeries at the hospitals. The hospitals in the Seattle area are started to be at the breaking point. They started building temp hospitals in Soccer fields. Yesterday it was one, now it's many. It was in the that one famous senior citizen's home (25% dead, 50% in hospital, 25% waiting). Now it's in 10 of them here.

This is real and serious.

Given how uncertain these times are, I’m not surprised that anyone who has had a mild cold and up since Jan is now pretty sure it was actually coronavirus. But if it was secretly that widespread, why are 90% people tested coming back negative? In short: listen to the public health experts, not the volunteer EMS.

90% of people being tested coming back negative either completely upends or misses my narrative depending on the details on the population being tested. there's just not enough there in your hand waiving to address.

dismiss if you will but I was here where within a week everyone went from completely healthy to having the flu.

i don't believe I'm the first to suggest that test based results are completely bogus.

The public health experts in Trump administration (CDC Director Robert R. Redfield, DHH Secretary Alex Azar has been a bunch of clowns) had not been forthcoming from late Jan up until National Emergency declared last week, either due to gag order or ignoring the fact that travel ban would not save America from this viral outbreak. Even NIH Infectious Disease Dr. Anthony Fauci has had an gag order at one point when Pence was in charge of the Coronavirus Task Force a few weeks back. Yes now it's getting better. But We lost a few weeks of time. In a pandemic, every second earlier save lives!

On the other hand, I follow Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding, Harvard/Johns Hopkins trained Epidemiologist on Twitter[1]. He was the first to blow the whistle in America and say COVID-19 is a "thermal-nuclear" level bad on a later deleted tweet[2], when Wuhan was in hell because the healthcare systems there were crashing in late Jan/early Feb. And now we know, COVID-19 is likely going to cause more death and worse economic tolls than the past nuclear war in WWII.

[1]: https://twitter.com/DrEricDing

[2]: https://disrn.com/news/harvard-epidemiologist-says-coronavir...

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