Travel From New York City Seeded Wave of U.S. Outbreaks
By: Benedict Carey and James Glanz (MSN)
Interesting findings. But probably won't surprise too many. Emphasis added is mine.
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
New York City's coronavirus outbreak grew so large by early March that the city became the primary source of new infections in the United States, new research reveals, as thousands of infected people traveled from the city and seeded outbreaks around the country.
© Bryan R. Smith for The New York Times Research showed that by March 1, when the first coronavirus case was confirmed in New York, the city probably had over 10,000 undetected infections.
The research indicates that a wave of infections swept from New York City through much of the country before the city began setting social distancing limits to stop the growth. That helped to fuel outbreaks in Louisiana, Texas, Arizona and as far away as the West Coast.
The findings are drawn from geneticists' tracking signature mutations of the virus, travel histories of infected people and models of the outbreak by infectious disease experts.
"We now have enough data to feel pretty confident that New York was the primary gateway for the rest of the country," said Nathan Grubaugh, an epidemiologist at the Yale School of Public Health.
Sign Up For the Morning Briefing Newsletter
The central role of New York's outbreak shows that decisions made by state and federal officials — including waiting to impose distancing measures and to limit international flights — helped shape the trajectory of the outbreak and allowed it to grow in the rest of the country.
The city joins other densely populated urban hot spots around the world, starting with Wuhan, China, and then Milan, that have become vectors for the virus's spread.
Travel from other American cities also sparked infections across the country, including from an early outbreak centered in the Seattle area that seeded infections in more than a dozen states, researchers say. Even if New York had managed to slow the virus, it probably would have continued to spread from elsewhere, they say.
But the Seattle outbreak proved to be a squall before the larger storm gathering in New York, where, at the end of February, thousands of infected people packed trains and restaurants, thronged tourist attractions and passed through its three major airports.
During crucial weeks in March, New York's political leaders waited to take aggressive action, even after identifying hundreds of cases, giving the virus a head start. And by mid-March, when President Trump restricted travel from Europe, the restrictions were essentially pointless, the data suggest, as the disease was already spreading widely within the country.
Acting earlier would most likely have blunted the virus's march across the country, researchers say.
"It means that we missed the boat early on, and the vast majority in this country is coming from domestic spread," said Kristian Andersen, a professor in the department of immunology and microbiology at Scripps Research. "I keep hearing that it's somebody else's fault. That's not true. It's not somebody else's fault, it's our own fault."
A lack of testing obscured the true extent of the outbreak for months, and officials acted on incomplete and sometimes conflicting information. The enormous growth of New York's outbreak partly reflects its volume of international visitors, especially from Europe, where most of its infections came from.
Dani Lever, communications director for Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, criticized federal authorities, describing an "enormous failure by the federal government to leave New York and the East Coast exposed to flights from Europe, while at the same time instilling a false sense of security by telling the State of New York that we had no Covid cases throughout the entire month of February."
A White House spokesman, Judd Deere, said that Mr. Trump had acted quickly. The president blocked most visitors from Europe starting on March 13, more than a month after he restricted travel from China.
"Just as he acted early on to cut off travel from the source of the virus, President Trump was advised by his health and infectious disease experts that he should cut off travel from Europe — an action he took decisively without delay to save lives while Democrats and the media criticized him and the global health community still did not fully comprehend the level of transmission or spread," Mr. Deere said.
Now that infections are dispersed around the country, travel from New York is no longer a main factor shaping the progression of the epidemic, researchers said.
As states around the nation begin to relax their restrictions, the findings demonstrate that it is difficult, if not impossible, to prevent those actions from affecting the rest of the nation.
Geneticists have analyzed and shared more than 2,000 samples of the virus from infected people. As the virus infects new people and replicates, it picks up mutations along the way. These mutations typically do not change the behavior of the virus, but they can provide a signature of a virus's origin.
Most samples taken in Texas, Ohio, Louisiana, Idaho, Wisconsin and many other states carry distinct mutations that can be traced back to viruses introduced into New York.
Over all, Dr. Grubaugh estimated, viruses spreading from New York account for 60 to 65 percent of the infections identified across the country.
Other scientists said that they would like to see more samples before calculating precise figures. But they agreed that New York's prominence in seeding the national spread appears to have begun in early March, two weeks before stay-at-home orders were put in place.
"New York acted as the Grand Central Station for this virus, with the opportunity to move from there in so many directions, to so many places," said David Engelthaler, head of the infectious disease branch of the Translational Genomics Research Institute in Arizona.
The most commonly detected viruses tied to New York have a distinct genetic signature linking them to outbreaks in Europe. Those spreading from Washington State have a signature linking them directly to China.
At this stage, scientists say, genetic fingerprints alone are not sufficient for pinpointing the source of the viruses. But travel patterns and case histories of early known cases support the idea, they said.
"It is a combination, still, of what genomic epidemiology and shoe-leather epidemiology is going to tell us," Dr. Engelthaler said.
Scientists modeling the progression of the disease nationally said the prominence of New York as a national hub was broadly consistent with their findings, although the picture was still emerging.
"I would say this is not surprising in a sense," said Alessandro Vespignani, director of the Network Science Institute at Northeastern University in Boston. "The picture emerging is consistent with numerical models."
Earlier research by Dr. Vespignani showed just how rapidly, and invisibly, the outbreak exploded in New York. By March 1, when the first coronavirus case was confirmed in New York, the city probably had over 10,000 undetected infections, his research group showed.
New York and Washington State are not the only sources of the outbreak. Other large domestic hubs contributed to the spread, scientists believe, and a more diverse genetic mix is still seen in some places around the country, particularly in the Midwest and parts of the South.
Even as domestic travel began to drive the outbreak, some infections were still seeded around the country by international travelers, geneticists said. It is possible, experts said, that some of the virus samples attributed to New York may have instead been seeded in other cities by direct flights from Europe, or from travelers laying over in New York before traveling elsewhere.
For that reason, some scientists said they would like to see more samples before linking the majority of infections in the United States to New York.
"I think that's probably the story line that's going to emerge, but I'd like to see more data," said Harm van Bakel, a geneticist at Mount Sinai in New York.
A New York Times analysis of travel data supports the idea that the chains of infection originated in New York, experts said. The number of cases across the country was closely related to how many travelers each place received from New York in early March, based on anonymized cellphone tracking data from Cuebiq, a data intelligence company.
"It looks like most of the domestic spread is basically people traveling out from New York," said Dr. Kari Stefansson, founder and chief executive of deCODE Genetics, a leading genome analysis firm based in Reykjavik, Iceland.
Last week, Dr. Andersen of Scripps Research and other scientists analyzing the outbreak in New Orleans reported that all of the samples taken from New Orleans were from the line linked back to New York. The virus swept through the area in March and has killed more than 1,000 people.
"You can figure out, with travel patterns, that the most likely thing to have happened is those came into New Orleans directly from New York," Dr. Grubaugh said.
Josh Holder, Michael Crowley and Derek Watkins contributed reporting.
Article is LOCKED by author/seeder
Tags
Who is online
89 visitors
Trump is off topic even though his name is mentioned. This is about origin.
This article neatly backs up yours:
New York City Royally Screwed Up In Their Coronavirus Response and It Created a Nationwide Outbreak
Source: AP Photo/Paul Sancy
Okay, it’s time we start blaming New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio for the nationwide outbreak for the Wuhan coronavirus. It wasn’t necessarily a hard puzzle. New York City is the epicenter of the US-based outbreak. It has the most cases and most deaths. In March, the NYC health commissioner presented Billy with evidence of an outbreak and suggested protocols to shut the city down to help stop the spread. Billy refused. Like China, Bill sat on his hands until he was forced to enact lockdown measures. China waited a week to do anything after their discovery that this virus will likely become a pandemic. Data now shows that New York City was the portal to this hell we’re in, though I doubt Billy or other New York officials will be held accountable for their incompetent response to this virus. The New York Times did write about the new data that shows the Big Apple was the placed that “seeded” the US-based outbreak [emphasis mine]:
So, you can see why the liberal media is freaking out about red states re-opening. It makes them look bad. These are the guardians of the Acela Corridor. The morally superior and self-righteous mecca of intolerant liberals who think they know what’s best for everyone sowed the seeds of the US-based outbreak. That’s a narrative killer. Remember these people have degrees in how to be a whiny little…you-know-what, so who cares about those who live outside of urban areas, right? Well, the areas where these philosopher kings that dominate the professional left inhabit is where COVID is most active. And these are the people who believe in science, though they also think that the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine causes autism because some doctor, who has been stripped of his credentials because he’s a quack, set the world ablaze with a huge science fake news story. It’s their areas that are still heavily infested. The same cannot be said for Oklahoma and more rural states. So, to protect their Democratic allies, they make up stories about rural hotspots. How the demands for people to get to work are grounded in racism or something. Oh, and if you want the lockdowns to end, you want black people to die. It all reeks of desperation. Over half of the states in the country can and should start to re-open, they weren’t hard hit and we’ve flattened the curve. Our health care system wasn’t overrun. For those who can start to re-open. For New York City, yes, it’s going to take a while longer. That’s the price you pay for having a doofus communist mayor who told people to go out and about as if nothing were happening in March. And yet, the voters here still think Comrade Bill is doing a bang-up job. But hey, he did his best, right? He did his best...for a drooling vegetable.
This 'president' really screwed up the Corona virus response by ignoring all warnings until it was too late and by dismantling President Obama's pandemic response team. Things wouldn't be so FUBAR now, this is all thanks to tRumps deadly handling of this
Your townhall piece is rambling incoherent malignant garbage.
"The research indicates that a wave of infections swept from New York City through much of the country before the city began setting social distancing limits to stop the growth. That helped to fuel outbreaks in Louisiana, Texas, Arizona and as far away as the West Coast."
That would explain why it spread throughout the country even after travel was ceased from China at the end of January.
"Last week, Dr. Andersen of Scripps Research and other scientists analyzing the outbreak in New Orleans reported that all of the samples taken from New Orleans were from the line linked back to New York."
Imagine....They have begun to analyze how this thing spread!
I live in an area that has a lot of retirees and tourism and since this thing started I've seen more NY, NJ and Florida plates than normal. All of the full time residents here are of like mind of keep your infected asses in your infected states.
I live in NC and we're about 1/2 way down the list of states for total number of cases. If you're from the #1 hot spot in the US you're damn right keep your ass at home. My wife and I are both essential employees with direct contact with the public and with my mother-in-law being 82 and my own mom being 67 we've been seperated from our families for a couple of months and my county has around 200 cases with 20ish deaths. While portions of the country can open up faster than others due to a lower number of cases and less spread, if you're from one of the top 10 places for plague keep your ass at home.
Same reason I don't go to work when I'm sick is so I don't spread it. If I was from a plagued area, while I would probably want to leave, I wouldn't want to travel outside of the area and potentially spread the disease to a less impacted area.
This is a far cry from papers please and more of a go back where you came from :P
Historian and Hoover Institution senior fellow Victor Davis Hanson told "The Story" Friday that Democratic governors of states like New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Illinois are creating an "untenable situation" by being slow to lift lockdowns instituted to counter coronavirus.
"We don’t think more people will die because of the lockdown versus exposure to the virus," Hanson said, mimicking the thought process of some Democratic governors, "We have to be absolutely certain that nobody gets the virus and dies."
As a result, he said, residents of those states are prevented from paying into the system with tax money, which is needed to fund entitlement programs.
"We have soaring welfare costs and we have soaring entitlement costs because people are locked in at home, Hanson said. "But we want other people to go out in the red states, and we want to criticize you for being reckless, but your people are going to have to provide the labor and the services and the capital to create wealth and give it to the federal government, so it can turn it around and give it to us and bail us out while we sit at home and suggest that we are your moral superiors.
"That is an untenable situation."
Hanson said the entire dynamic is "incoherent" because people cannot "stay at home" and yet demand the government print money to "run entitlements while we are not working."
"[T]hat money has got to come from somewhere," he said, "and it’s going to come from the places that are actually risking and going out and working and providing it."
I believe some New Yorkers were in full flight. Fear has been a big part of the problem with this. As we go along we have come to learn a bit about this thing, such as who is vulnerable and who is less vulnerable. We are now finally getting masks and test kits out after starting out behind the 8 ball. The FDA has finally allowed the emergency use of Remdesivir and on Saturday approved emergency use authorization (EUA) to Quidel Corp for the first COVID-19 antigen test.
We are making progress. It is amazing what America can do!
I saw a piece about your state where some businesses are open, like a coffee place, and NO ONE IS WEARING A MASK OR SOCIAL DISTANCING. I wonder how quick your number of cases will go up?
DUH
But them super smart Democrats said there was nothing to worry about, How could NY seed the nation if COVID19 isn't that bad?
My favorite was what De Blasio said on March 5:
On March 30, USNS Comort arrived in NYC and was underutilized. WTG, De Blasio!
That was never said.
See 4.1 and some other spots including California and Ms. Pelosi
Jim,
This article is set up in a manner that I can not participate in. If we want to play the blame game, there was enough of it to go around, but apparently I can't express that. And I am no fan of Ms. Pelosi. but she was not the only one who didn't see a problem.
Are you rewriting history that Democrats didn't downplay the virus in opposition to President Trumps Travel ban? Do I really have to source it again to you?
First of all you are not allowed to mention Trump on this article. Second, Pelosi said that and since you brought up Trump, so did he at one point. In fact it was going to magically disappear, remember? Also, he stopped travel from China. Well, the disease we have came from Italy. There was no ban on Italy.
Not that I am defending De Blasio, since I don't like the man, but I would like a date on that photo. And for the record, our subways never closed.
See you can't help yourself, I'm not even going to start with you.
So your response to myself saying Democrats said there was nothing to worry about is to say it didn't happen and but Trump. Okay. got ya.
Here is the article from March 5th with the photo.
And yet you do. And why should I stop myself when you don't either?
But let's review:
No what I said was:
Is she not a democrat? I think that pretty much says that a democrat said that.
I just pointed out that both parties were in denial.
So it isn't "But Trump", it is full disclosure. Nothing I said was wrong.
OK so our first case was March1. Second case was on March 3. Not even close to a crisis yet, so that photo is disingenuous, although I still think he is an idiot, he wasn't making any kind of point that day.
The ice cream princess sabotaged the response to it for working people after it hit and mocked us as she sought pork for her friends at our expense
I'm sure Italy is one of the 26 European countries in the ban after the Chinese ban. By the way it wasn't a ban, it contained restrictions. He was criticized tremendously for doing so.as well from the Democrats.
I heard a nurse over some rest homes back on March 25th complaining about Cuomo's order that rest homes had to take Coronavirus whether they were suspect or were infected back into the rest homes. As I understand it, almost 30% of the deaths in NYC have been in rest homes. Rest homes throughout the country are really at risk and that was a very bad decision.
That along with cutting back on the number subway cars which made each car become more densely packed and cutting back on the number of buses making them more densely packed were 3 mistakes that probably increased the number tremendously throughout the USA.
Here's a little video I put together: I did this about a month ago.
Speaking of not seeing a problem, did anyone see the President’s press secretary rip the msm a new one yesterday?
Did y’all see this? It was a thing of beauty.
I mean, can you even? I wasn’t sure anyone could reach the same level of BACKATCHA-ness that Sarah Huckabee Sanders made into an artform, but Kayleigh is really shining here.
I love that she was 100% ready for the media to ask this dumbass question. I LOVE IT.
Thanks - that goes great with Cheerios. Better than Spicer.
She nailed the msm again on Friday regarding Flynn. She really has the lamestream media’s number. I’m where I look forward to her press briefings to see how she will hoist the msm on their own petard yet again.
She's great on offense, too.
We know the SARS-CoV-2 virus was brought into the United States by international air travel. And we know that domestic spread of the virus is a result of domestic travel. So, it shouldn't be surprising that international ports of entry are the gateways that allowed the virus into the United States.
But that doesn't explain why the outbreak in New York is an order of magnitude worse than elsewhere in the United States. Air travel brings a diverse group of people into (all too) intimate contact with each other. Airlines certainly do not incorporate social distancing into their travel accommodations. A flight crew could infect hundreds of people that disperse to all parts of the country. So, why hasn't the virus spread farther and faster? Why has the outbreak in New York been so very much worse than elsewhere?
Understanding the pandemic will require understanding why the outbreak in New York has been so severe. Why does COVID-19 prefer New York?
Well in New York City, the population density is around 25,000 per square mile. And it's a world hub of business an finance so there are people in and out every day.
San Francisco has a population density of 18,000 per square mile. Chicago and Miami have population densities above 10,000 per square mile. Chicago and Miami are ports of entry for international travelers. All three of these cities are business and tourism destinations.
But that doesn't explain why other large, high population density cities haven't experienced similar outbreaks as New York. New York isn't unique for high population density or as a travel destination. The easy answer really doesn't provide an explanation.
What is it about New York that has made it so susceptible to COVID-19? I don't know. But I think we need to find out.
My guess would be that they have so many people there it had spread widely before they realized what was going on.
It is simple. We are an international hub for both air travel and business. People arrive here and go on to other places. Most of the people are Europeans. The west coast gets Asians. Hence why NY ended up with the Italian version (as did the rest of Europe) and we got it from there.
I will disagree with you BF. I think that the curve in NY v the rest of the nation is showing that lockdowns work. We will know more in 2 weeks as cities open up. Of course, we can't do this forever. There is the economy to worry about. But both China and Italy showed us that we can keep down the spread of the disease and get it into a manageable number with a limited lockdown.
Of course, 20/20 hindsight is always true. We will be studying this pandemic for years to come, and if we don't come up with a viable vaccine, we may be facing a second wave. So much that we really don't know.
We don't know that yet. We are going to make that 100,000 before June 1 for sure and that is a huge number of dead for a 4 month period. We will probably have a second wave. There is no way to know if these models were wrong or right yet. They are the best-educated guesses, based on other pandemics.
But that does not explain why the outbreak in New York has been an order of magnitude worse than elsewhere in the country. Why hasn't Florida seen an outbreak similar to New York? There is a lot of travel between New York and Florida. Florida is a business and tourism destination for international and domestic travel. Florida's population size is close to that of New York. Florida is highly urbanized.
The highlighted research in the seed article indicates New York was a gateway for the SARS-CoV-2 virus entering the country. But that doesn't explain why the outbreak in New York has been much more severe than elsewhere in the United States.
True, the SARS-CoV-2 virus doesn't respect boundaries primarily because people do not respect boundaries. New York wasn't the final destination for all European travelers. And people in New York were travelling to other parts of the country.
Suggesting that infected European travelers only traveled to New York isn't plausible. We know the virus spread across the country through international and domestic travel. Every travel destination had a fairly equal chance of experiencing a severe outbreak. So why was the outbreak in New York more devastating than elsewhere in the United States?
It seems that there is something about New York, itself, that contributed to the severity of the outbreak.
Nerm, I don't think you meant it that way (at least I hope not), but it sounds like you that NY. are somehow less than of different from the rest of the US. It really is as simple as being a densely populated area that is the largest hub in the country and had the most movement in and out.
The point is that most of the country has not experienced COVID-19 outbreaks of the same severity as has New York. New York has been an outlier that does not represent the rest of the country.
Based on the information in the seed, the proper Federal response should have been to quarantine New York since the virus spread from New York. That's the rational conclusion drawn from the seeded article. But we know the virus did spread due to domestic travel.
Since other parts of the country have not experienced outbreaks of the same severity as New York then the Federal response may well have been adequate for the country as a whole. If there is something unique about New York that contributed to the severity of the outbreak in New York then New York is not a suitable model for responding elsewhere in the country.
New York really is somehow different than the rest of the country. The outbreak in New York has been an order of magnitude worse than elsewhere in the country. The SARS-CoV-2 virus spreads wherever people go. We shouldn't expect the virus to stay in New York. And the virus hasn't; the data in the seed article shows the virus spread from New York.
But outbreaks across the country haven't been nearly as severe as the outbreak in New York. Yes, New York is different; the data shows that. The question is why?
Wow, you really know how to nitpick and put words into my mouth that I never said. No China took a hammer to the problem. But then again, we really don't know what happened there. They lie to us all the time. For all we know people could have been dropping in the streets.
And don't even try to guess what I am thinking. I never promoted quarantining entire parts of the country.
Oh, nice scenario you have there. What an obnoxious useless comment.
What are you talking about? NY had its first case on March 1. Within 2 weeks it had spread like wild fire. Now that the disease resides in most cities across America, we will see if social distancing works or doesn't. It takes 2 weeks for average incubation. I hope I am wrong, but the charts of the spread doesn't make it look good already. None of these cities met the 2 weeks decline as asked for by the Fed. Gov.
Well, if it landed in New York and a sizable portion of those people who were infected and probably didn't realize it stayed in New York, it would seem that a larger number of people could have crossed paths with them and for a longer period of time, the incubation period would have been longer in New York with the exponential increase that occurs thereby having a greater amount of time to expand.
If 100 infected people come into New York, 50 of them stay in the area around New York and 50 are dispersed throughout the country. So , we get 50 people running around one city, infecting say, 1 other person a day. 50 people are infected the first day,giving 100 infected people. The second day those 100 people infect 100 more. Some or all of these people do not know they are infected, go out and at the end of the third day 400 people are infected. Plus, because no one is stopping them or thinking about it, there are 100 more infected people coming into the country from Europe each day, before we even know there is a problem. If this goes on for 15 days, that is over 3 million people infected.
The rest of the air passengers have been dispersed throughout the nation, to areas probably less densely populated, so the rho would be lower. Just for shits and giggles, let us say 0.5. So, these people land in varying locations if 10 of them were on the first day, then 15 would be the total infected by day two, by day three say 23 people have been infected. So, it is not spreading as fast and it is dispersed throughout the country.
Now, If instead of 1:1 ratio, let us just say that it is only 10% of that, or 0.1. So, every ten people infect only 1 person. At the end of 15 days 1 infected individual could have infected 39,321 people, if they were being added onto with an additional 1 infected individual from outside. If it were only that 1 person going home to the farm, it will be even less. But those 50 people returning to New York? At the 10 infected people causing 1 infection per day rate, even if no more people came into the country who were infected, 901,120 people could become infected. If 50 more infectious people came home to New York from Europe each day, that number could be as high as 1,966,025.
So, we have a much larger problem in New York because the coronavirus had a bigger footprint in this area. I would imagine that the other major metropolitan areas received a similar injection of infection, but the amount might have varied, and the amount of time between getting those infectious people and the point where they closed down may have been different. Also, the degree to which the urgency of stopping the virus was communicated and followed probably had something to do with it.
That analysis applies to other international destinations, as well. We know that the SARS-CoV-2 was brought into the United States predominantly by air travel. There are direct international flights from Europe to Miami, Chicago, and Los Angeles. Not all air travelers arrived in New York.
Population density in aircraft and airports are fairly consistent. Air travel forces people into intimate contact within confined spaces. Longer flight times allows the virus to spread further within an aircraft. And since we know that the virus was brought into the United States predominantly by air travel then it follows that aircraft and airports would be the source of initial spread of the virus. Conditions across aircraft and airports are fairly uniform with very similar population densities and interpersonal contact. All international destinations would have a fairly equal chance of receiving a baseline group of carriers.
The problem in New York is shared by other international travel destinations; New York is not unique in being a destination for international travel.
COVID-19 Tracker - Bing
The slope of the infection curves provide a rough idea about transmission. Of course, the curves are influenced to varying degrees by artifacts of testing. Comparing the curve slopes could provide some, admittedly imprecise, insight into the role of population density in spreading the virus.
What you are suggesting is that individuals in New York experience a greater number of contacts with other people due to population density. But that explanation suggests that New York is not a suitable model for a response in areas with lower population density. The severity of the outbreak in New York is an outlier that does not represent the severity of the pandemic for the rest of the country.
The severity of the outbreak in New York is obvious. The data does show that the outbreak in New York has been more severe than elsewhere in the country. The data shows that New York is an outlier. What has happened in New York is not a suitable model for responding to the pandemic in other parts of the country. And what has happened in New York would be an inappropriate measure of the effectiveness of the national response.
The data shows that New York is somehow different. That difference is an exception and not a rule for responding to the pandemic.
(1). No one knows what happened in China. If "keeping down the spread of the disease" is simply making up numbers, we could certainly do that.
(2). If we handled the spread of the disease as well as Italy, there would be 150,000 + dead already. Per capita numbers are how you compare countries when one country is six times bigger in size.
(3). A "limited lockdown" like China would have constited stopping all travel into and out of New York months ago. That was politcally impossible to do when the government of New York was telling people to go about their normal routines.
You were asking why New York was different. I posited a hypothesis.
Though the conditions for all flyers are approximately the same, the flyers themselves are individuals who had different itineraries while abroad, the flights vary in terms of seating arrangements, flight duration, flight dates and points of departure. Therefore, not all international flights are the same and should not be treated as such.
Further, all international flight destinations are not served from all international airports, so we might might be able to parse out the data and actually find the time, place and intensity that the virus arrived in New York.
It is a daunting task to try and compile the total number of people coming into all international airports from abroad according to where they were coming from and at what time. This would seem to be a key bit of data that I do not have.Since I am no data mining expert, I will leave that be right now, for I have seen that rabbit hole and do not wish to enter.
Suffice it to say, there may have been a peculiarity in the people coming into the 3 major airports in the New York area at some point around the end of January through the end of February that distinguishes them from the people arriving at other airports. In order to find the why of the New York pandemic, this is a major factor to look for.
As for whether or not New York should be used a model, I am not sure in which way you mean. New York State is a whole different thing than New York City, and the rates of infection are not as high or almost non-existent in the more rural locations. That is because movement has been limited for the past 6 or 7 weeks. When they decide to open the more rural areas, I will be curious to see if that changes.
Please refer to my comment here:
Because we are essentially 50 countries. Hence why the president left the governors to decide what to do. And your math is off. Italy has had the disease longer than us, and at the hight of the season. We don't know how well we would have fared if we got the disease in Jan 31.
Here is the timeline:
So that lie has been told and retold already that I am really getting sick of correcting it.
We got our first case March 1.
Our second case March March 3rd.
The SOE was declared on March 7th by the governor:
So please tell me when the governor made such a glib comment and please back that up.
We do have federalism and I’m grateful to our President for being the adult in the room and helping all who need federal support as they deal with their issues. Trump is the perfect example of how to manage a federal response to a national emergency. Now that the 15 day and the 30 additional days to bend the curve have passed, many of us who are unfortunate enough to live in a blue governor state are jealous of our friends who live in red states that are opening back up, resuming their lives and freedoms, and restarting their economies. We are rooting for them to be successful and to keep the curve bent while restoring their economies. We hope that you all recover and move miles beyond us economically and laugh at those in our states who try to guilt trip you out of moving on. We openly mock our urban oppressors who would lock up our rural regions until they get their numbers down more. We yearn to be free. We salute the Sutter, Yuba, and Modoc counties among us and will demand more opening up for us or to join them. It’s not like with the needs in the cities and the budget issues that they have the money or the man power to occupy the rural areas of Michigan, Illinois, New York, California and coerce obedience to urban dictates. They could let the rural areas form their own separate states out of these four. Solidarity with the rebel counties!
no one can see into the future. but in a few weeks we will see into the past.
if sweden hits herd immunity this month as they say. we will have a much better idea about what's what.
With all do respect, Perrie, "our first case" was not the first case, it was the first confirmed case. There was a dearth of testing due to several factors.
I don't like any of the published timelines, if only because they tend to be macroscopic in detail and make assumptions based on what they are interested in. Not necessarily a bad thing, just don't convey the level of detail to be able to draw firm conclusions from. If one looks at a number of them, one can start to see a more full picture. Also, in my opinion, people seem to have forgotten that a timeline should actually be an info-graphic, which makes it easier to hold in ones head (at least my head!) the relative position of events.
And the government was trying to not create a panic, so they were indeed communicating at the same time as these first cases were popping out a "remain calm" message when the governor and mayor should have been conveying "this is deadly serious and we need to shut it down right now." because they could see the effects on China and Iran. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that our goose was cooked before we knew it was in the oven.
NY on Pause helped to flatten the curve. I don't think that some people realize that the flattening of the curve necessarily means that since the curve is flattened, at least in New York, the effects and infections of the disease will be spread out over a longer period of time, giving medical facilities greater amounts of time to deal with each case. With infectious disease timing is very important.
Tom, we can only go by what we knew at the time, and so the first case that showed up in a hospital and identified was March 1. Probably it was here already, but there is no way to prove that right now.
The point that man other's in this article is trying to make is that NY didn't do its due diligence. That is simply not true.
And yes, flattening the curve as an absolute necessity, not only for our fellow New Yorkers, but to stop the spread of the disease across the US. All New Yorkers are eager to open up, and the gov is getting ready to, but we have to be careful because reversing the curve can happen very easily.
It was, in point of fact, here. On the 3rd, the first case of community spread was confirmed. From whom did the person get it? We may not know, but we do know that it was gotten from some other person who had not been out of the country.
So, there we have a case of community spread happening before March 1st. I don't know what anyone can say but, " It was here. "
Did the Governor and the mayor "drop the ball"..?? This seems beside the point.
Could they have communicated the seriousness of the situation better? Definitely.
Did they know the seriousness of the situation? Probably not entirely. I think that the gravity of the situation escaped them.
Was it possible to know the gravity of the situation? Yes. They only had to look at the other countries that were dealing with the coronavirus to see that the situation would become worse fast. The public health officials, both in the city and at the national level were told to STFDaSU by the politicians. Bad Move.
And I was discussing weaknesses in your hypothesis. Isn't that how the method is supposed to work?
The travel environment is fairly uniform throughout the system. And the travel environment certainly is not conducive to social distancing practices. The virus won't wait until individuals arrive at destination to begin spreading.
That ignores spread of the virus within the travel system. If the virus did not spread within the travel environment then the declared value of social distancing would be unreliable.
List of the busiest airports in the United States - Wikipedia
One problem with the data is that the numbers represent an aggregate of arrivals and departures. While JFK handles more international travelers (LAX is second, MIA is third, SFO is fourth); the aggregate volume of international travel through LAX and SFO (both in California) exceeds the volume through JFK. And volume of international travel through MIA and MCO (both in Florida) isn't dramatically less than JFK.
Attempting to find distinctions among international passengers arriving in the United States doesn't address the spread of the virus within the travel system. New York wasn't necessarily the destination for international travelers arriving at JFK. That's true of other international airports, as well. Patient zero traveled to the United States; the SARS-CoV-2 virus did not originate in New York or in the United States. It seems more likely that spread of the virus was influenced more by conditions at the destination rather than differences between carriers of the virus.
The simple argument that New York is a final destination for international travel indicates a distinction that differentiates New York from the rest of the country. The severity of the outbreak in New York has been influenced by conditions specific to New York. New York is somehow different.
Since New York is an exceptional case, rather than a representative case, then New York doesn't provide an appropriate yardstick for assessing the national response to the pandemic and does not provide a representative guide for response in other parts of the country.
That is exactly how it is supposed to work.
You say:
Indeed, without wearing a tightly fitting mask for the duration of a flight, it would be hard to not catch or spread the virus. ( Link )
I was taking the above as assumed, and using where and when the air passengers went both before and after the flights as variables that might differentiate New York from other destinations.
Looking at today's schedules, Newark (EWR) has Amsterdam (AMS), Oslo (OSL), Frankfurt (FRA), London (LHR), Tel Aviv-Yafo ( TLV ), Reykjavik ( KEF ), Copenhagen ( CPH ).
JFK has London (LHR), Santo Domingo ( SDQ ), Tokyo ( HND ), Reykjavik ( KEF ), San Juan ( SJU ), Hong Kong ( HKG ), Montego Bay ( MBJ ), Port Of Spain (POS), Guangzhou ( CAN ), Liege (LGG), Shannon ( SNN )....
This is taking way to long... The West coast airports receive primarily Asian traffic while the east coast airports handle European traffic. New York got hit harder because it had a larger amount of infectious people walking around for a longer time. The steps that were taken were taken because the horse had left the barn and we were running to try and catch it. As to whether it applies as a model for the rest of the country would depend on if the virus is already prevalent in the community or not. Beyond a certain point, you have to shut down. It worked to slow the spread better in California because it was caught sooner. And the response should be the same across the board.
You keep repeating a lie. The states both blue and red are opening, just at different rates.
Again another lie. We live in a federalist country so each state decides for itself and all of them are aiming to open.
Well, this is just sheer nonsense. Our upstate people are on board with our gov. He provides the facts and all decisions are made on these facts. Please don't pass off your disdain for blue states off as facts.
"Oh My Goodness! Yankees In Georgia? Who Let Them In?" - Aunt Pitty Pat - Gone With The Wind...
Turns out Trump halting travel from China was too little too late. Covid-19 was already in America from Europe!
I always assume that hateful bullshit articles, like this one, which were plainly crafted to divide Americans during such times of overwhelming national stress must be anti-American foreign propaganda. Only Putin or maybe some demented hardcore Trumper would be trying to blame America's Greatest City for a worldwide pandemic while thousands of fellow Americans are still fighting for their lives from coast to coast...
“Turns out Trump halting travel from China was too little too late.”
huh? i thought it was racist. I wish liberals would make up their mind.
“hateful bullshit articles, like this one“
If you want to keep your head buried in the sand, go ahead. The adults will analyze the data and learn from this situation to be better prepared for the next situation like this.
Are there any adults on the progressive left in America?
[Deleted]
Last I checked most of us by a large majority blame China 🇨🇳 for the spread of the virus, not the wannabe center of America’s universe.
Well that was a totally useless disgusting comment.
I would tend to blame air travel, myself
If I go crazy then would you still call me Superman
NYC is one of the busiest ports of entry in the whole world. When the pandemic hit Americans were caught out all over the world trying to get back home. It was already a mathematical impossibility Covid-19 would not spread in the US by then. Cuomo couldn't keep it out of NY any more than Trump could keep it out of The White House FFS!
So asking somebody to provide proof is "no value"?
How can you provide proof to that comment? It's just a comment.
Americans are divided only because some hate Trump so much that they assign China virtually no blame for the spread of their virus. Americans are divided because some Americans who oppose restarting the economy not only don’t want to do it where they live, they want to guilt trip or when possible use government power to make sure others don’t either even if they want to do so.
[Removed]
If you want to blame China for the spread of the virus (it is not theirs, it just comes from that area) then you also have to blame the POTUS for the spread of the virus in the US. China lied and the POTUS said it will be fine.... Gone in a few days.
It is all they have.
Blame others.
Sad really.
I CLAIM COMPLETE AUTHORITY YET CLAIM ZERO ZILCH ZIP NADA DIDDLY SQUAT RESPONSIBILITY
And now there's this:
Pompeo changes tune on Chinese lab's role in virus outbreak, as intel officials cast doubt
Cast doubt? Don't claim 'complete bullshit'?