The optimistic take on this is: that means soon enough will be exposed that their immunity will stop the spread.

The pessimistic take on this is: we also don't have strong evidence that the previously exposed are immune, ie, have a strong enough immune response to stop the virus.

[1] https://lab24.ilsole24ore.com/coronavirus/

So either everyone in New York City was infected, or most probably 200-400k infected in LA is an order of magnitude of wishful thinking (e.g. ~2% false positive test rate.)

But also, NYC is considerably more dense, so diseases spread far more rapidly. Especially so considering heavy public transit use versus, what I would say is, extreme overuse of personal vehicles.

California local and state government being ahead of NY in issuing shelter-in-place orders even though NY was being harder hit even before the divergent response also makes a difference. But, yeah, the hyperdensity of the NYC metro area is a big factor.

Previous studies suggested that the strain circulating in NYC is of European origin, whereas the California strain, arriving earlier, was of Asian origin.

It's always possible that the NYC one is more fatal. We don't have data, but it is possible.

Thing is, though, at the peak, NYC was seeing a 60% positive rate on tests and is still seeing something near 30%. That pretty much guaranteed that the vast, vast majority of NY cases were not detected, and still probably are not.

(Italy is back around 5-6% again, for example)

It must be the case that a dramatic percentage of NYC is infected. Certainly not more than 100% as some oversimplified maths suggest, and likely not 80%+ that would be very comforting -- but quite likely between 30% and 45%, given the Stanford and LA studies, and the NYC testing data.

EG this from UK https://twitter.com/ONS/status/1252518098047041536

I love it when people have strong opinions about a complex, constantly changing piece of difficult science.

https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/covid-19-what-proportion-are-a...

"Setting: Diamond Princess cruise ship, Yokohama, Japan (n=-634 tested positive).

Proportion: 18%"

Also:

"23 Residents of a Long-Term Care Nursing Facility King County, Washington

10 (43%) had symptoms, and 13 (57%) were asymptomatic."

But then:

"Seven days after testing, 10 of 13 asymptomatics developed symptoms"

That means that just 3 of 23 remained asymptomatic there too, i.e. 13%.

It is estimated that the people mostly spread this virus exactly in the phase where they still haven't developed symptoms, and the virus can be detected. But that doesn't mean they will remain without the symptoms.

Especially as we know the disease affects these demographics up to 100X more than the young.

For instance consider: "Emerging evidence suggests many more people are infected than tested. In Vo Italy, at the time the first symptomatic case was diagnosed, about 3%, had already been infected – most were completely asymptomatic." [1]

[1] https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/global-covid-19-case-fatality-...

Not a covid-19 symptom.

EDIT: I'm wrong, sorry. Thank you to kgwgk for the correction.

The most common symptoms of COVID-19 are fever, tiredness, and dry cough. Some patients may have aches and pains, NASAL CONGESTION, runny nose, sore throat or diarrhea.

Like you said, probably only 10% to 15% truly asymptomatic.

Because people on here panicked without thinking and don't want to admit it.

No one wants to say "Oh yeah, I ignored second year calculus and never bothered plotting logistic growth curves with the full spread of expected fatalities. Because of this I supported legislation that's started the next Great Depression. But I meant well!"

I can't speak for the original commenter, but I think the evidence increasingly suggests that we would benefit from allowing people to visit small groups of friends and run non-essential businesses.

I don't know if there is a "right" policy answer on what to do with something like that.

As someone else said, the lockdowns are probably illegal, you can't just throw away freedom of association over the flu. But if we didn't have them, we might have seen another 100k dead..

Where did you study constutional law? Rights granted in the constitution are subject to many restrictions. There is no explicit "freedom of association" in the Constitution, although it has been held to be implicit in freedom of speech. Free speech doctrine includes a "time, place, and manner" test that's applied to restrictions on speech when the government has a "significant interest" in the restriction[1] (e.g., national emergency for a viral pandemic). I don't know how the lockdowns (which are mostly not full lockdowns) would fare if Supreme Court were to apply the time, place, manner test, but I wouldn't presume to offer an offhand opinion that they're "probably illegal".

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech_in_the_Unite...

A law has to exist that gives states and the federal government the ability to do what they are doing and that law needs to not violate special protections built into the Bill of Rights.

With a state of emergency declared, some things can temporarily be enacted that under normal circumstances would not be legal.

I don’t know if all the lock down rules are legal, but I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that governments have overstepped their bounds.

A) Everything is illegal for a citizen unless granted as legal by a state or federal govt.

B) The fed govt. can do anything it wants. The only things it cannot do are things that are expressly forbidden.

C) A state can do anything it wants unless a law prevents it.

D) A state of emergency does not expand the powers of the the state or fed govt.

Those are the reverse of what I said I remember and none of those sound right.

(for C/D, ignoring the supremacy clause)