Hacker News Reader

Comment by chasd00 | Hacker News Reader

that's crazy to me, what are the demographics of NYC? Is the population more susceptible to dying of Covid19 somehow? I still can't get my head around why NY has suffered so disproportionately.

View on HN

There are many close-knit communities in NYC and the surrounding area where people live much more densely (i.e. large family in a single house) and congregate more often with one another than do West Coast types. Jewish communities in New York seem to be especially hit by this; not sure if this is because they did not follow social distancing guidelines, or if they're not possible to follow given unavoidable physical constraints.

> Jewish communities in New York seem to be especially hit by this

From my understanding they are not hit any harder than other groups, they are just way more visible.

Yes, if you look at Israel and Montreal, Ultra-Orthodox communities were hit very hard. Based on infections numbers, not deaths(since it's mostly very young population). Lack of communication and distrust of local authorities (only praying to G-d will help...)

It's a small state with a lot of people packed next to each other. Lots of people use public transit... subways are less than six feet apart.

If the NY subway is anything like London, people will be less than 6 inches apart at rush hour. I imagine that will have played a big part in the spread in both of those cities.

Yes, the subway is the correct answer. That's how this virus spread like wildfire in NYC. Second reason could be the elevators in the tall buildings (there are plenty of those).

A counter argument is that the same didn't happen (or hasn't happened yet) in cities that also have massive public transportation systems like Tokyo or Seoul. There is probably many confounding factors, such as mask use, no talking on the subway, etc, to make pointing to one particular factor very hard.

EDIT: typo

Those cities see more widespread use of masks generally. And specifically once COVID-19 was common knowledge, so was the use of masks.

Widespread mask usage doesn't happen in NYC, same as the rest of the U.S. It's very recent this is practiced in the U.S., whether voluntarily or by order of a handful of local governments. And in my local area where it's not mandatory I only see about 3 in 4 using masks.

And Japan has a culture of talking quietly which greatly reduces droplet transmission even beyond the practice of wearing masks.

NYC has a culture of yelling.

Do you get yelling on the subway in NYC? Passengers in London famously don't even make eye contact.

Yep, I agree with you. I was trying to make the point that massive transportation is not the only factor at play. Like you said, there are many others that should be considered.

I don't think that fully explains it. There are plenty of European cities of similar density to NYC that haven't been hit nearly as hard. Naples Italy, for example.

The most likely answer is that NYC was just a good place for it to spread which had plenty of travelers to get things started fast, but that that the death rates aren't particularly high -- everywhere that has fewer deaths has just had less of their population infected ... so far.

Germany has about as many cases in total as NY, yet less than 1/2 of the deaths. The death rate seems high in NY, maybe because hospitals could not cope?

Germany has about as many diagnosed coronavirus cases; the difference could be wholly explained by Germany testing more people. (Germany has administered 2 million tests, New York State [I didn't see a figure for the city], about 700 thousand.)

> I still can't get my head around why NY has suffered so disproportionately.

Compared to California, NY locked down much later and did it in slow, incremental steps.

In my opinion it is more likely that the main cause is that the infection got here very early, and that the mitigation and containment measures started very late in comparison with cities of similar size and density (Seoul for example).

A dense, mega-city is the worst case scenario for an infection to spread.

population density. you have the density of Asia without the propensity to wear masks.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com