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I saw a statistic that 0.25% of NYC’s population has already died from Coronavirus (15k/6m). It seems worse there due to the density, and similarly dense cities like London are in the same boat.

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It doesn't just seem worse, it is worse (a lot worse), at least so far.

Sort this table by per-capita total deaths: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

And that's just by state. NYC proper is likely even worse than that would suggest.

Yeah, that statistic is what I point out to people who claim that the IFR from coronavirus is actually tiny due to undiagnosed infections.

The biggest spike in the local death rate since 9/11/01 is not "just another flu season". Though NYC's population is probably closer to 9m now.

Biggest spike, period.

NYC confirmed deaths related to Covid-19: 7,890 and counting.[1]

9/11 death toll: 2,996.

[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/new-york-citys-coronavirus-deat...

There are other densely populated areas in the US, namely LA Metropolitan Area, South Florida metropolitan Area and Boston metropolitan area. E.g. NYC area is 26,403 people per mile^2, and Boston metropolitan area is 13,841 people per mile^2. But NYC seems to be doing much worse than 2 times worse than Boston. Maybe it's because NYC population is older? E.g. in Boston 52% of deaths are from LTC facilities (yesterday's data), which seems to imply virus hasn't penetrated into community that much.

I don't think you should be expecting people per square mile to scale 1:1 with mortality rate anyhow. I would guess putting twice as many people within a square would result in the virus spreading an order of magnitude faster. Similar to how increasing infection radius in an SIR model increases spread by much more.

On the other hand, California has a much lower death rate despite having cities with a population density in the same magnitude as NYC, which seems to suggest some level of luck of the draw here in initial unrecorded spread before lockdowns came into place.

> California has a much lower death rate despite having cities with a population density in the same magnitude as NYC

New York is denser than any city in California.

"New York is far more crowded than any other major city in the United States. It has 28,000 residents per square mile, while San Francisco, the next most jammed city, has 17,000, according to data from the U.S. Census Bur"

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/23/nyregion/coronavirus-nyc-...

If it's just density, why does SF have so few deaths (20), fewer than cities much less dense than SF? eg Seattle is much less dense but has 15x as many deaths as SF. There is clearly an element of chance/which sub-population was infected/timing of responses in play here.

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/future-development/2020/04/07...

From another thread, subway?

Subway doesn’t explain why Seattle more than SF.

Basically only timing of shelter-in-place does.

Manhattan 69,467 per square mile (Wikipedia).

This doesn't explain Staten Island. Its population density is half of San Francisco's, its population half, but has had 533 deaths vs. SF's 20.

And a sibling thread mentioned the subway; it doesn't go to Staten Island.

I'm going to venture a guess that lifestyle is a huge factor in the difference. People are generally more active out west (better weather, more open spaces/ parks/ mountains, better beaches, etc.) and smoke far fewer cigarettes.

Important to point out that about 155k people die in NY every year. About 1% of Americans die each year, so there is a crucial distinction between dying with a disease, and dying of a disease.

Risk is not additive. The median age for covid deaths is well into the late 70s, which means that there is a high risk of death in the same period anyway would the person not have been infected with covid.

The overall mortality numbers will be up, but throwing that stat out there is hugely misleading.

This seems to misrepresent overall mortality with cause-specific mortality.

If I'm struck by a car with stage 4 cancer, the car accident killed me, regardless of my outlook. If that car accident happens to be highly contagious, well then the cause is even more important.

> Risk is not additive.

It isn't always, but it very often is and it is in this case.

> If I'm struck by a car with stage 4 cancer, the car accident killed me, regardless of my outlook.

this is not obviously true. the analogy is good, but you didn't go into enough detail.

if someone with terminal cancer is hit by a car, makes it to a hospital, and dies some weeks later, why did they die? both things likely played a role; how do you report this statistic?

i stopped worrying about the virus and started worrying about the economy and its politics weeks ago.

if someone dies in a traffic death while having stage four cancer then this would indeed not change year on year mortality (assuming the person dies of cancer).

This is an awful example though because the victim profile of car deaths is generally middle aged adults, who would not have died otherwise. If your average car driver was a stage four cancer patient traffic safety would indeed be less of an issue relatively speaking.

The risk profile of covid patients skews so heavily towards old age and existing preconditions that it is actually not trivial at all. It's immensely important to look at death rates in the context of general mortality, not a vacuum.

It may very well be the case that covid 'crams' the deaths of people who would have died anyway into a short timeframe and there'll be singificantly lower flu mortality and so on later this year.

> It may very well be the case that covid 'crams' the deaths of people who would have died anyway into a short timeframe

You've highlighted the exact problem with your argument via this supposition.

citation please?

Doesn't seem quite right but not too far off. .25% of NYC's population is 21,000.

Johns Hopkins shows 14,451 deaths as of now: https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.h...

As of today, 10,344 confirmed deaths [0] from COVID-19, of a population of 8.4m [1] is 0.12% [2].

This is less than the original parent states, but only by 2x.

[0] https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=coronav...

[1] https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=nyc+pop...

[2] Elementary math?

NYS has 18,776 deaths as of today’s count.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

That’s New York State. My numbers are for the city proper.

Not all the deaths are tested for COVID. Those that aren't don't make it into the stats. [1]

Overall mortality, compared to the baseline, has skyrocketed in the past few weeks. For the March 4 - April 4 time period, it was double the usual rate. [2]

[1] https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/0...

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/10/upshot/corona...

Yes, this is a very obvious and severe underestimate for sure. But the point is that the death rate must be at least 0.12%!

Look up a death toll

Look up population

Derive percentage

https://www.google.com/search?q=nyc+population says 8.4M

https://www.google.com/search?q=corona+death+toll+nyc says 10k

https://nypost.com/2020/04/18/nyc-coronavirus-deaths-near-13... says 13k

This gives 0.1%. The OP's numbers are based on 6M population & 15k deaths. I believe their trying to cite total deaths, not just covid-19 related. Their NYC region also seems to be more localized

Population of NYC was 8.4e6 in 2018

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