Did duration of time spent on the NYC subway system have a direct impact on the explosion of Wuhan virus cases in the outer boroughs?
Last week, I saw a thread from Buck Sexton about a study linking New York City’s Wuhan virus outbreak to duration of time spent on the NYC subways.
Well, this definitely would explain in part how New York City became the epicenter of the Wuhan virus outbreak in the US, wouldn’t it?
Three weeks ago, I did a breakdown of the hardest-hit New York Counties in which I wrote:
I’m sure there are a lot of theories as to why this is the case – population density, reliance on mass transit, frequent travel between these hot-spots, number of foreign travelers (or all of the above).
Of the nine counties I wrote about, the one with the fewest cases by population was Manhattan itself. The counties surrounding Manhattan fared much worse.
Could duration of time riding the subways explain that? I’m thinking yes.
Yesterday, the New York Post reported that in his daily presser, Governor Cuomo explained that the Wuhan Virus can live up to seventy-two hours on bus and subway surfaces.
So if you’re riding from Manhattan to one of the outer boroughs, you’re going to increase your exposure to the virus because you’re on the trains for a longer period of time. That’s just common sense.
The other day, it was reported that antibody testing in New York State shows that a possible 2.7 million New Yorkers could have been exposed to the virus. Which means far more people than officially reported could’ve have gotten COVID-19 and built up an immunity to it – without ever knowing they had it. So who the hell knows how long this bug has been here. Something tells me it was present far earlier than the first officially reported cases would have us think.
And if that’s the case, while the MTA might be cleaning and disinfecting the trains now, there could’ve been a month or more when this virus was riding the subways and nobody knew it.
Now, I’m not saying the subways alone are the cause of New York’s catastrophic numbers. New York isn’t the only large metropolitan area with a subway system after all. And no other city with subways has the infection rate we’re seeing in New York.
At the same time, no matter how the virus arrived in the city, it certainly seems plausible that the subways quickly became the main transmission device that spread it throughout the downstate region.
And by the time they shut things down, it was far too late to stop it.