The NYC subway seems to have a pretty unique local microclimate though. I don't know if it's just the lack of regenerative braking or if the close proximity to the iconic steam heating network is also playing a role in this, but compared to most other subway networks, the MTA feels like a living history museum - even if you close your eyes, block your ears and only take in the air. The influence of air heat and moisture on virus spread is quite complicated (evaporation ends some droplet classes, condensation ends others) so it's quite possible that some subway systems are much worse spreaders than others.

I think one thing is NY is testing like crazy. They're actually trying to find out just how many people are infected.

Some countries are still trying to avoid testing. Many Japanese hospitals are turning people away from testing unless they have severe symptoms lasting several days, so naturally, numbers look tiny. And let's be frank, China's numbers just shouldn't be believed.

According to worldometers stats, NY is at 40 tests per death, while the US average is at 100 tests per death. Spain and Italy are in the vicinity of 75 and even Belgium (hardest hit nation state in Europe) is still managing 55. New York is definitely not "testing like crazy", they are hardly keeping up. Portugal for example is at more than 400 tests/death, Czechia at 1000. Testing like crazy is what Singapore or Australia are doing.

You can’t hide excess deaths, at least in the developed world. Japan has not had 20,000 deaths.

Japan's population is lower than the USA. You're comparing absolute numbers when what you want is per million.

The US doesn't have high quality national excess death data, apparently. That's surprising. Part of the distorted response to this outbreak is because most countries only seem to publish relatively recent excess death data - often only a few years. But when longer term data is examined it shows that there have been plenty of flu seasons with similar death rates. That's why people keep comparing it to the flu.

At a national level the peak in the USA was at 20,000 excess deaths. In 2017 the peak was at about 7,000

(https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/cdc-releases-detailed-nat...)

So it must be much worse, right?

Well, not really. If you look at the longer term data for a hard-hit country like the UK, where there are a lot of lockdown-created excess deaths due to excessively underloading the hospitals:

http://inproportion2.talkigy.com/

You can see that this outbreak had at the end of April an almost identical number of excess deaths so far this year to 2017, 1999 (which was worse), 1998, 1996 and 1995.

It seems flu care might have got better over time, or perhaps vaccinations had the impact. But so far the impact on COVID on the UK is not much different to disease outbreaks throughout the 1990s.

The UK stats will go up and it'll be worse than any other outbreak for sure, because at this point the population is in a state of fear and avoiding hospitals - even if they don't want to, critical treatments for other diseases have been cancelled to free up space for a surge that never came.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/04/27/care-homes-see-r...

"UK's biggest provider says deaths among residents at three times last year's rate, but only half of additional deaths linked to virus"

And this is with almost any death being ascribed to COVID, without requiring tests or evidence. The lockdown will claim more lives than COVID will.

> http://inproportion2.talkigy.com/

What a rubbish site. Its first argument is that deaths are not worse than 2018, so its not bad. Even though you can see that number of deaths quickly surpasses 2018 in 2-3 weeks and rises a lot higher faster, while it started a lot lower.

It's third argument is even more ridiculous. "Look at this graph showing a strong correlation between lockdown stringency and infection cases, stringent lockdowns increase infections!" is akin to saying people should stop using umbrellas because they increase rain.

(Also that graph is useless because the number of cases is not normalized inhabitants per inhabitants, so its x axis is bad)

>[...] look at the longer term data for a hard-hit country like the UK, where there are a lot of lockdown-created excess deaths due to excessively underloading the hospitals

talk about ridiculous claims.

There may be some basis in that. Excess deaths in the UK on a weekly level are higher than expected the number of covid deaths on a death certificate.

However this is only really in over 60s

The explanations would be

1) more covid deaths than have been mentioned on death certificate 2) more deaths from other reasons

I haven’t seen any detailed breakdown of cause of death other than “covid mentioned” (and thus not mentioned)

Or wear masks.

I've seen it plausibly argued that in e.g. Japan, they have a culture of not talking on your phone on the subway, and this substantially reduces transmission.

London just the same

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/sep/29/tube-chat-ca...

This is true - not only do they have a culture of that, they have signs up telling people not to talk on their phones and to be quiet.

And angry elders who will glare at you violently if you don't adhere to the rule.

The vast majority wear masks and the operators wear gloves - and this is when there's not an active epidemic.

You get the impression that a lot of people in Western society would rather risk infection than be seen wearing a mask - defies logic.

You cannot compare situations in the US to situations in Asia since the populations are so different. In Asian countries people wear masks regularly... in the US the Vice President considered it too emasculating even for a HOSPITAL visit. There are plenty of good things about Americans but some of their worst qualities are a perfect match for disease transmission.