66% of the people in the hospital are people who normally live at home. What percent of the normal population lives at home - 90%?
NYC has been on lockdown for weeks. A very large percentage of the city is staying home. Some completely isolated, but most are not completely isolated.
People have periodic contact with family, friends, neighbors, pharmacies, grocery stores, and/or delivery people. People who live in buildings with shared common areas (doors, entryways, elevators, mail rooms, laundry rooms, ventilation systems, etc.) cannot help but risk some exposure. Masks and social distancing are not 100% effective.
It's actually been since March 22nd so well into its second month now. When the order is lifted on the 15th it will be a week shy of two months. On it's face anyway the news definitely isn't encouraging.
"He said the information shows that those who are hospitalized are predominantly from the downstate area in or around New York City, are not working or traveling and are not essential employees. He also said a majority of the cases in New York City are minorities, with nearly half being African American or Hispanic."
"Cuomo said nearly 84% of the hospitalized cases were people who were not commuting to work through car services, personal cars, public transit or walking. He said a majority of those people were either retired or unemployed. Overall, some 73% of the admissions were people over age 51."
It doesn't surprise me that the rate of infection by those staying home, that are in poor neighborhoods and minorities, is high. How many of those households have an essential worker in their family? How many of them might be living in large multi-generational families where one or more are instacart shoppers, Uber/Lyft drivers, etc?
We need more data before we can really determine if this is surprising or not.
I'll tell you what I thought immediately after seeing those photos: - First reaction: OMG, those people are not social distancing and are putting everyone at risk. - Second reaction: If those essential workers can't deliver food to all the people trapped in their apartments, society would collapse very quickly.
I personally find this alarming that there is still widespread community spread. In my more rural state I think there is community spread, but nursing homes and long term care facilities are still dominating hospitalizations and deaths.
You should probably expect it - you only end community spread in short order with R=0. With, say R=0.5, you get something like a ten day half-life for number cases. Furthermore, tests tend to have ramped up after social restrictions, so number of new cases isn't a useful figure outside of the context of % of positive tests, and deaths are a lagging indicator.
In both France and Italy seven weeks of hard lockdown have only reduced deaths to about a quarter in that time-frame.
What are those hints exactly? Cell phone tower data, metro card swipes, bandwidth usage? I'm guessing it's not yet warm enough for power consumption(ACs usage) to be an indicator.
In the countries that were effective at stopping the spread, they quarantined sick people outside of their house. Since transmission is so effective its almost a guarantee that the rest of your household will catch it if you stay home, either by touching a shared doorknob, then touching their face, or by droplets landing on surfaces, or any number of other mechanisms.
We should seriously consider paying for hotel rooms for people that test positive. The total cost would likely be far lower than letting them infect the rest of their family.