Few points in either the SF/CA or NY/NYC cases are mutually exclusive: density matters (exposure) but so also does time (an essential aspect of exponential growth)* and it is also true that state and city governments were hindered and ill served by an inept and misguided federal response (calling it a response is being generous).
*Infection = exposure x time is the basic formula for any infectious disease; e.g., it takes ~1,000 viral particles for the average flu to infect a person and normal speech only emits about 20/min so it would take 50 minutes of talking with someone to catch it assuming all those particles reached you.
We had a fabulous response when our local county Judge was in charge. He shut Dallas Co. down after the first case of community spread. We were the first place in Texas to go into quarantine. If he was still in charge Iād feel so secure but our GOP governor and his people started fucking with us and with our judge in about a week. They couldnāt stand that he was getting such praise. Now everything is fucked up to the max. Weāre a blue county in a red state and they hate us and want us to die.
Density is definitely a factor. Mass transit is a factor of density as well. (Subset?) Add to that climate (Heat and humidity does have some mitigating factor) And of course ātesting ratioā. Texas is consistently near the bottom in testing. And you know - as Trump says āTesting causes the numbers to go upā so letās stop testing - problem solved.
I can only speak anecdotally - but I personally know four people whose bossās have decided āThis is working. This IS the new normal.ā - I think itās going to be a big incentive to lower rents in the high rent places like NYC, LA, SF and such.
This is deeply misleading. Queens isnāt that much more densely populated than San Francisco (21k/sq. mi. vs. 17k/sq. mi.). Queens got hit roughly twice as hard as Manhattan, which is itself nearly three times as dense as NYC overall. San Francisco didnāt get hit anywhere near as hard as anywhere in NYC because it shut down earlier.
If anything, the denser population of NYC should have been even more reason why it should have been even more vigilant. It was not. And as @bonvivant notes, there are plenty of comparably dense places in Asia that got hit and managed not to be shit in responding.
Itā not that hard to figure out why. Look at the housing situation in both states. The cases came in from Europe, not China. This was after the so called travel ban. Household overcrowding can provide some insight. Because of the cost of housing in NY you have multiple people living in the same space. Population density isnāt the only issue, itās lack of adequate housing, lack of health insurance, more people with chronic illness in one household and the labor market. NY is not only known for Broadway but also itās tenement buildings. They are just like petri dishes.
Many people in NY went into shelter quickly but were they already infected by people who came from China through Europe and infected others before the city was able to take action? There could be some decent research done if tRump would stop interfering in the cities trying to juice people up to riot to cover up his incompetence.
DONALDGATE 2020
Seattle mayor Jenny Durkan was on the local NPR radio yesterday, saying that the city is probably going to face a new normal with lower rents and real estate prices due to a permanent shift towards working at home. Thatās going to massively affect the city finances.
She was especially concerned about the survival of all the small businesses like bakery shops, cafes, bars, and restaurants that depend on people working and living in the urban core.
Not all that tremendously different overall, and San Francisco did basically exponentially better in controlling the outbreak because it shut down earlier.
Now letās take a look at the density of NYCās five boroughs. Want to guess which one has the lowest per capita case rate?
Spoiler: Manhattan has basically half the case rate of anywhere else in the city. In fact, the per capita case rates roughly correlate negatively with their population densities:
Manhattan: 1,240 per 100,000
Brooklyn: 1,886 per 100,000
Bronx: 2,900 per 100,000
Queens: 2,318 per 100,000
Staten Island: 2,553 per 100,000
I will grant you that NYCās high rates of international travel probably seeded the virus more deeply than it was in Washington and California. And NYCās crowded public transportation was almost certainly a major source of transmission that is not comparable to anything in the rest of the country. But there is plainly much more going on here than simple density of population. New Yorkās response was shit. The West Coastās response was not.
The density of the areas was my first thought. Comparing apples and oranges. Climate Iād imagine is also a factor, once again applies and oranges differences.
And Manhattanās density isnāt four times that of Seoul. Seoul has 40,830 people per sq mile versus 71,340 for Manhattan. Close to double, but far from four times. Seoul has a population of 9,962,393, Manhattan has a population of 1,628,701.
Helped a company do just that. Even giving employees cash to help set up a home office was less than a tenth cost of rents etc. 4600 employees later the plan was still going strong. I believe a key factor was the creation of drop in centers at local strip malls around the city. Provided central place for meetings, coping, etc. So once a week social aspects of teams gathering to discuss and just to say hi helped. That was 1996 and still in place today, actually would be easier to do today because of technology changes.
