MIT Researcher: Subways Seeded COVID-19 Epidemic in NYC

[RJM62]

It was obvious from the start, of course. Most of use us who are familiar with the subway system were aghast that Cuomo didn't shut it down immediately upon leaning of the first COVID-19 case in New York State. (MTA, which runs the subways, is a state agency, not a city one.)

http://web.mit.edu/jeffrey/harris/HarrisJE_WP2_COVID19_NYC_13-Apr-2020.pdf

More blood on the hands of an idiot politician. Unfortunately, there is no equivalent of a war crimes tribunal for sheer stupidity.

Rich

 

[denverpilot]

I think we pretty much have to file this in the “duh” folder of history in a city where getting a sandwich for lunch at a deli, you’ll literally touch twelve people before you make it to the counter. Lol.

 

[Walboy]

OP, what if MIT comes out with another research paper saying Covid-19 deaths are highly correlated to obesity and other preventable chronic health conditions?

It will seem so obvious in hindsight.

Who then goes before a war crimes tribunal for stupidity?

I'm not a Cuomo supporter and know almost nothing about him, but your last sentence irks me. Hindsight is wonderful, isn't it?

 

[RJM62]

OP, what if MIT comes out with another research paper saying Covid-19 deaths are highly correlated to obesity and other preventable chronic health conditions?

It will seem so obvious in hindsight.

Who then goes before a war crimes tribunal for stupidity?

I'm not a Cuomo supporter and know almost nothing about him, but your last sentence irks me. Hindsight is wonderful, isn't it?

Unless you've ridden the subway during rush hour, there's really nothing that can explain how tightly people are packed in. Many times I was able to feel the heartbeat of the person pressed against me. There are handholds along the sides of the car, but you really don't need them because there's no way you could fall except straight down.

This picture was taken a few days ago:

The stations aren't much better. This is a picture from August 10, 2019:

It didn't take a hell of a lot of foresight nor hindsight to know that thousands would die if they didn't shut down the system during a pandemic.

To make matters worse, the NYC Subway is only one piece of a huge, interconnected mass transit infrastructure that include the Long Island Railroad, the Metro North Railroad, the Staten Island Rapid Transit system, the Port Authority Trans Hudson (PATH) commuter trains, New Jersey Transit and all its bus and light rail connections in New Jersey, Amtrak, hundreds of local and long-distance buses, several ferries, JFK by way of AirTrain, and LGA and EWR by way of express buses.

When the first patient was diagnosed in New Rochelle, literally everyone I know just assumed that the MTA would immediately stop accepting passengers. New Rochelle has a Metro North station that connects with the New York City subway. It was just a given that it would be shut down. It would have been unconscionable not to.

But he didn't. Instead, Cuomo and NYC Mayor de Bozo assured citizens that the subways would be kept running "at all costs." That cost turned out to include human lives. As of this morning, 6,000 MTA workers had contracted COVID-19, and 68 had died.

Hindsight, huh? You look at those pictures and tell me that anyone who would let that go on during a pandemic of a deadly virus isn't guilty of manslaughter.

Yet they had the balls to harass a handful of Orthodox Jews for conducting a burial, and they cancel doctor's appointments and therapy groups for the mentally ill. They go to extremes on one end, but pack people into Petri dishes on the other.

I've never liked politicians. I always held out that maybe five percent of them were decent human beings, but that the rest were dirtbags. I didn't care, though. If they wanted to take bribes, sell their influence, or **** their interns, that was no business of mine. But when they start killing people, I draw the line.

Rich

 

[denverpilot]

I've never liked politicians. I always held out that maybe five percent of them were decent human beings, but that the rest were dirtbags. I didn't care, though. If they wanted to take bribes, sell their influence, or **** their interns, that was no business of mine. But when they start killing people, I draw the line.

The problem right now is there’s something going to kill people no matter what decisions they make. All they’re worried about is which group of the loudest complainers, about anything course they choose, will oust them from office.

And of course, how to spin the decisions either direction AND maintain their usual destructive levels of partisanship.

Closing transit certainly seems “reasonable” there, but it goes hand in hand with closing everything and isolation, and as we’ve seen with your friend, and the at home deaths from the usual natural causes with people terrified to go to hospitals or who can’t reach a Doctor... that’ll kill people too.

Hell, all the failing businesses will drive suicides, it’s one of many factors that caused my brother in law’s, in “normal” times.

The whole thing is a giant mess. The politicians never stood a chance. They’ll spin whatever they choose for the rest of their days in office, and push the partisanship so hard to make sure “half” will agree with them and “half” won’t, we’ll all get to see just how bad that gets in hard hit areas.

About all anybody should really get out of this is that politicians never have a real plan, nor could, ever. About anything.

In the end, we’re just trying to adapt our incompatible behaviors into a change that nature threw at us. Living stacked on top of each other like cordwood is a way to create a bonfire right now. We probably knew urbanization isn’t super healthy for humans, but many also want various benefits of it, also.

Even those are debatable. Many find living that dense to not be of a net benefit to them. Others become terrified when they can’t see another human anywhere to the horizon.

Mathematically a quick lockdown probably made sense. But the mechanisms for moving humans around in quantity in monster cities closing down, causes some nasty effects also.

Now the decisions become much more murky with every possible path becoming a no-win scenario for politicians who claim they can predict the future or control it.

No argument with you that the early numbers would have indicated HARD shut down of densely populated places and transit. But it didn’t go that way. Would New Yorkers have accepted a screeching halt to it all, anyway?

“All NY public transit closed in 24 hours...” before there were 100 cases? People would have rioted.

 

[jspilot]

I commuted everyday on the subway for work when I was still commuting to my job. I stopped using the subway about two weeks before they shut down my school( mid March.) Looks like I made the right call. Started using the CITI bike system instead. It was such an obvious call even for me to avoid the subway— just a shame the leadership is not aware of much I guess. Why not just close down temporarily to do a deep clean?? Seems like a doable solution that may have saved a bunch.

The point of my post though is to say the NYC subway system is a disgrace and has been for many years. The system is literally falling apart, filled with delays and a falling apart infrastructure. I bet a lot of those subway surfaces have not been cleaned properly in years. There will be a lot that changes in NYC after this including, I bet, a massive move out of the place. Should have happened years ago— the guts of the city have been failing for a really long time. Been commuting into there for 14 years, the past 5 have seen the biggest fall

 

[RJM62]

The problem right now is there’s something going to kill people no matter what decisions they make. All they’re worried about is which group of the loudest complainers, about anything course they choose, will oust them from office.

And of course, how to spin the decisions either direction AND maintain their usual destructive levels of partisanship.

Closing transit certainly seems “reasonable” there, but it goes hand in hand with closing everything and isolation, and as we’ve seen with your friend, and the at home deaths from the usual natural causes with people terrified to go to hospitals or who can’t reach a Doctor... that’ll kill people too.

Hell, all the failing businesses will drive suicides, it’s one of many factors that caused my brother in law’s, in “normal” times.

The whole thing is a giant mess. The politicians never stood a chance. They’ll spin whatever they choose for the rest of their days in office, and push the partisanship so hard to make sure “half” will agree with them and “half” won’t, we’ll all get to see just how bad that gets in hard hit areas.

About all anybody should really get out of this is that politicians never have a real plan, nor could, ever. About anything.

In the end, we’re just trying to adapt our incompatible behaviors into a change that nature threw at us. Living stacked on top of each other like cordwood is a way to create a bonfire right now. We probably knew urbanization isn’t super healthy for humans, but many also want various benefits of it, also.

Even those are debatable. Many find living that dense to not be of a net benefit to them. Others become terrified when they can’t see another human anywhere to the horizon.

Mathematically a quick lockdown probably made sense. But the mechanisms for moving humans around in quantity in monster cities closing down, causes some nasty effects also.

Now the decisions become much more murky with every possible path becoming a no-win scenario for politicians who claim they can predict the future or control it.

No argument with you that the early numbers would have indicated HARD shut down of densely populated places and transit. But it didn’t go that way. Would New Yorkers have accepted a screeching halt to it all, anyway?

“All NY public transit closed in 24 hours...” before there were 100 cases? People would have rioted.

Yeah, I think they would have accepted it. They were very critical at the time that the system wasn't shut down. At least the people I knew who still lived in the city were. Of course, two of them are FDNY paramedics and the others know those two, which may have affected that group's opinion. It just seemed like such a common-sense thing to do.

Besides, it's not as if the system had never been shut down before in recent-enough history for any adult who lives there to remember.

Rich

 

[Salty]

Yeah, instantly unemploying 8 million people for weeks or months (people who have to cram together for pretty much everything they do anyway) was the obvious choice. What a bonehead move. /sarcasm