I’ve never heard of Market Urbanism – is it a credible source? NBER is well-known, of course.
I grew up in NYC, and we didn’t have much money so we didn’t travel much out of the Five Boroughs. A few limited trips “upstate” which meant anything north of Yonkers to us. I ended up going to college in Pittsburgh, thinking any big city that I heard of would be similar to NYC. Boy, was that wrong!
Even my high school friend who moved out to SF is shocked at how much more crowded and busy NYC is compared to SF.
My point is, NYC is a pretty unique place, so it’s not too surprising that this virus would hit differently here than elsewhere. It’s unlikely that any other American city has the same reliance on public transportation within the city and to the surrounding areas – I often have to stand up on my trip from my sleepy suburb all the way in on the commuter train, leaving aside the 3 inch personal space you get on the subway.
Does anyone know if that early super-spreader could have had a significant impact to the course of the virus in NY and NJ?
Manhattan in number 8. One through seven are: Manilla, Pateros, Mandaluyoung, Baghdad, Mumbai, Dhaka, Caloocan
Of those, my uncited opinion is that none of them come close to the amount of international travel that NYC has. Mumbai is probably second. Interesting that the top three cities are in the Philippines, as is number 7 and number 15. I have no idea how much international travel goes through there.
The next “international” city on the list, IMO, is Paris, number 27.
That list of dense cities is a bit flawed. Obvious omissions from the list are Singapore and Hong Kong. Both are seriously crowded, but also count enough sparsely populated land as part of their precinct that they come up with unrepresentative numbers.
Singapore is a major travel hub. It carries about 10% more air passenger traffic than JFK, and almost all of that will be international. Even if you add in Newark, I suspect Singapore still sees more international passengers.
Singapore is of course a study in alternate courses for handling Covid-19. After early triumph they took their eye of the ball and it came around to bite them.
Along these lines, Paul Krugman suggested that you want to look at something like population-weighted density, so it computes the density where most of the people are.
No question every state is fighting for test kit availability. Personally, I think that’s down to politics so I won’t go into that on this forum.
However, here is data (Becker Hospital Review) that shows a state-by-state comparison of the number of tests done in the nation. It’s a week old, but obviously New York was testing very aggressively in comparison to all other states.
My emphasis. It’s a “lifestyle choice” for claustrophiles / non-agoraphobes, same as in European cities. Isaac Asimov essentially lived in a closet with a typewriter and that suited him fine. I could almost stand that too. (I’m no claustrophobe and have lived in tiny NYC spaces.) Most somewhat normal people need a bit more area to stay somewhat sane, avoiding homicidal outbursts.
Living quarters I’ve seen in German and Italian cities are tiny so most non-intimate interactions occur in public: plazas, bars, cafes, social halls, etc. It’s incomprehensible to US suburbanites. I don’t think Euro metro rates are much lower than NYC.
The list of cities is seriously flawed. The Hong Kong district of Mon Kok for example has 340,000 people per square mile. Hong Kong has done reasonably well with Covid.
Singapore, if you take out the immigrant worker dorms, has it under control. And I’m pretty sure the immigrant dorms folks are locked down and not allowed to mix with the local Singaporeans.
When looking at other areas with similar population density, pubic transport use and measures implemented around the same time, it would be pretty interesting to look at temperature and humidity as factors as well.
The research I mentioned upthread only looked at Italy, the US and the Netherlands. So Tokyo, does anyone know which time could correspond to the NY timeline and how to compare the humidity?
You can easily look up the weather, of course, but humidity is usually given as % and to get to g/kg I think you take into account… elevation and temperature or something? I really don’t know how this works.
It could be an interesting clue; there are likely to be many factors interacting. Only looking at public transport and timing of measures doesn’t seem to provide adequate answers, though they’re easiest to compare. But the way droplets hang in the air is obviously going to impact spread enormously, other than when someone coughs directly in your face.
The death counts in New York are scary high and will hopefully not become a reflection of what we can look forward to in the rest of the states. It occurred to me today that That excessively high deaths per million could easily soar if just one factor is found to be true. That factor would be is there any evidence that New York keeps people alive longer than they would normally live. Not referring to longer lifespans but more referring to more care in the end stages of aging???
I’m honestly not sure what you’re asking. Is it, does NYC have a higher life expectancy than other large cities? Is it, are New Yorkers older, on average, than other large cities? Is it, do other large cities kill off their senior citizens?
I think the highest life expectancies are in the Midwest, but I’m not positive and I don’t feel like looking for a cite. I’m fairly sure NYC is not the oldest city, since they have lots of younger immigrants. Again, I would expect cities in the rust belt or Midwest to tend older, because young people have been moving to the coasts, I believe (again, no cite). If it’s the third thing, I don’t think NYC has better end-of-life care than other large cities.
Not really about life expectancy, asking if possibly New York or even the U.S. in general tends to keep people alive longer who may not be alive in other parts of the world giving us a larger population of those with severe underlying conditions. I am pretty sure the U.S. already has higher obesity rates than most places.
Well, this thread is about NY, so this seems to be a little off-topic, but since the US has lower life expectancy than just about every other first world country, I’d say no, we don’t tend to keep people alive longer. See here:
We’re number 35! We’re number 35! Right between Lebanon and Cuba.
Maybe you’re interested in life expectancy once you reach age 65? Here we do a little better:
OK. This proves that I am mistaken about west-coast transit patterns, but supports my point that intensity of transit use correlates to intensity of coronavirus spread.
I remain baffled about why Tokyo isn’t a complete disaster. Big, transit-dense city with a lot of China-bound international traffic through it. Input is welcome.
I’ve been curious about this too, and why the people who are arguing for the economy to open back up aren’t using Japan as an example. I can’t come up with a reason for their lack of infection except maybe (and not a convincing maybe) that I read that Japan’s homogeneity keeps out new people into their immediate area, and they’re mostly all wearing face masks already. I’m not sold on either of those reasons, but I haven’t seen a better reason.
Japan is remaining a puzzle. One thing to note - they are still only reporting hospitalisations. The only confirmed infections are for those that have been admitted. So one might reasonably multiply the actual number of infections by a significant factor.
None-the-less, they report deaths. And whilst deaths have been steadily rising, with an almost perfect exponential, it is one with a very low growth rate. The Japanese are becoming alarmed, but only in so far as their medical system is getting close to capacity. Given the delay of infection to need for hospital care to death, we might expect things to get grim in Japan. But, no matter what, the low growth rate is odd.
One would expect transmission to be high given the crowded nature of a city like Tokyo. There has been essentially no useful changes to mobility patterns of people. And for many Japanese, again like NYC, eating outside of the home is an important part of life.
Once needing hospital care, Japanese patients seems to have about the same outcomes as elsewhere. That is to say, over 10% die. So that part of the disease’s progression is similar. But why we have not seen the same reproduction rate in Japan is worthy of attention IMHO.
The question was not about life expectancy, it was more about keeping people limping along longer. Countries with longer life expectancy I would expect would also have healthier seniors. Example might be a guy in his early 70’s who had a lot of underlying issues. He may have had 3 heart surgeries and be on a dozen meds where in some countries he would not have gotten the the 3 or 4 heart surgeries.
Right, that’s why I cited the life expectancy at 65. If other countries were letting people die, but the US was going through heroic efforts to keep people alive, you would expect our life expectancy at 65 to be better than most.