Travel From New York City Seeded Wave of U.S. Outbreaks

[brooklynite]

Source: New York Times

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.

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.


Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/07/us/new-york-city-coronavirus-outbreak.html

[Maxheader]

1. The big apple,

Living in Milford ct , went with some eng buds into n.y. a couple times.

Road my bike inside grand central station, along with hundreds of others,

for the 5 boroughs ride..

One hell of an interesting place...Hate to see this finding..

[ananda]

2. That might be why this strain is so virulent.

It probably came from the mutated strain in Europe
and not so much the original one from China.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

3. The primary source of New York infections was Europe, not ChJy-nuh. . . . nt

[bronxiteforever]

4. From Nathan Grubaugh's twitter feed this AM

Trying to get on top of this. No, we cannot estimate the number of #COVID19 cases in the US associated with outbreaks in NY from a relatively small number of sequences. NY looks to be a primary source of spread in the US, but not all came directly from NY
Also, we are critically lacking virus sequence data from most parts of the country, and a few thousand sequences annoy be scaled up to represent >1 million infections.
8:56 AM · May 7, 2020·Twitter for iPhone

Link to tweet

?s=20

[dalton99a]

5. Kick

[Igel]

6. Before NYC, we saw it twice before.

Wuhan was about to go into lockdown, and people fled to other parts of China.

N. Italy was about to be locked down, and people fled to other parts of China and even Europe. Some countries closed their borders--and were criticized for it.

In the US, people fled NYC. And when other places complained, they were criticized. Quarantine apparently means "encourage people to go and spread".

It's a common sense sort of suspicion to have. Since we'd had two models for how it goes and how to prevent the spread--prevent the travel. Since the virus is easily spread by personal contact, stop the contact and stop the spread. Get lots of people from places with higher infection rates into areas with lower infection rates, let interpersonal contact occur, and you expect the virus to spread from places of high concentration to low concentration. Except unlike solutes, there's no dilution.

[getagrip_already]

7. all roads lead to trumps ignorance, incompetence, and dementia....

If this had been an actual potus, and a staff and cdc more interested in the countries health than trumps whims, we would have earlier warnings, earlier lock downs, more testing, and better tracking.

In short, NYC was just a hapless hub, not an evil to be vilified. But trump is that evil. But for him, a lot of people would be alive and healthy and many fewer cases would be spreading.

Don't blame nyc for this mess. That's like blaming the petri dish for growing the virus. It's the idiot who mishandled it and allowed it to spread that is to blame.

[captain jack]

11. Agreed, as this article will no doubt be used to divert attention from the bigger issue. n/t

[FakeNoose]

8. By coincidence, I happened to spend a weekend in NYC immediately before lockdown

My birthday was March 14th which fell on a Saturday this year. My grandson who lives with his parents (my son and daughter-in-law) in lower Manhattan also has HIS birthday on March 14th, so we're "Birthday Buddies." We try to get together and celebrate our birthdays in mid-March. Last year I wasn't able to go, so I was doubly determined to get to New York this March.

I took the Amtrak train from Pittsburgh to NY-Penn Station on Friday, March 13th. Surprisingly few people were on the train out of Pittsburgh, but as we traveled east I noticed how many got on mid-state heading for Philadelphia and/or New York. Many college age kids and 20-somethings, many were dressed in Saint Patrick's Day outfits. I'm sure a lot of them were Penn Staters and they were heading for the Saint Patrick's Day parade that took place in Philly on Saturday. (New York City cancelled their parade this year for the first time ever.)

Once I was in New York I saw many people wearing facemasks already - they were well ahead of the rest of the country in that regard. I had no mask but I was careful to wear gloves and not touch public railings and door handles. While visiting my family that weekend I was shocked to see that neighborhood restaurants were open, but almost empty of customers. This was quite unusual for a Friday or Saturday night, where people waiting in lines outside restaurants had been common only a month or two before that. Quite a lot had changed since my last visit to New York during the Christmas holidays.

My ride back to Pittsburgh on Monday was subdued and the train was 2/3 empty. It was the same day - March 16th - that Governor Wolf ordered the lockdown in Pennsylvania, and suddenly everything changed in our world too. After my return, I self-quarantined for 2 weeks to make sure that I wasn't carrying the virus home with me. (I'm OK!) I've spoken with my son several times, and he insists that they are safe and they're being very careful, however he thinks the media has blown the whole thing out of proportion. I really have to disagree, it's not blown out of proportion. These are dangerous times and everyone needs to be aware and very careful at all times.

[BumRushDaShow]

12. As a note-Philly ALSO cancelled its St. Patrick's Day parade (1st time ever) so it didn't happen

Thankfully we remembered the horrors of holding a parade in the middle of a pandemic like we boldly did back in 1918.



And the result -







No dumbass "repeating history". Of course back then, the mayors were all Republicans!

[FakeNoose]

13. There were a lot of drunken people wearing green that weekend

Whether they were at a parade or not was beside the point.

They were walking around from bar to bar, and I'm sure there were a lot in Pittsburgh too. I saw at least 100 people get off the train in Philly that Friday and most of them looked college age or slightly older. Another 200+ got off in New York, however only about half were college age. Nobody would mistake me for a "college kid" I'm more of a "grandma type."

[BumRushDaShow]

16. Well now THAT is normal (especially when it warms up)!

And that time period was "spring break" for many schools, so yeah, you have the "wandering drunks".

I still have my epic "PA" thread going here - https://www.democraticunderground.com/10142446993 (first posted March 13 with info regarding the governor's actions and what was going on here in Philly, with reports from western PA and a couple other states)

[BumRushDaShow]

9. I posted the below a couple weeks ago in my epic PA thread but you also have this --

As you can see by many maps of cases, the highest levels of "confirmed" cases started at the most populated areas along the coasts and at the north/south borders of the U.S. , and it has slowly migrated inwards. So for example (from CDC's twitter feed as of 4/22/20) -

Link to tweet

And when overseas travelers were told to come home back in mid-March, the airports they were directed to fly into, predominately fall within the states that now have the most cases (there were 13 airports designated). And as Cuomo again noted today, most returning from Europe, came through JFK & Liberty (in Newark, NJ) - e.g. people coming in from the UK, and some of the worst places like Italy and Spain. And Asians (from the entire Pacific Rim) came through places like LAX, SEA-TAC, and HNL.





Surprise surprise surprise.

The fact that a state like Massachusetts, which is rarely talked about, has been walloped and is 3rd, only behind NJ and NY for total cases, is obviously because Logan airport was a designated airport to come into. And since PA's eastern side borders the hotspots of NJ and NY, with I-95 and Amtrak's northeast corridor being a huge thoroughfare for people up and down the the coast from D.C. to Boston, then it was only a matter of time before we got hit here in the east.

And this realization is why states shutdown to stop the spread by travel. If anything, the states to watch at this point, are MD and VA due to Dulles having been a designated airport (and it's probably why Congress pretty much got out of dodge).

The most dramatic models were showing case and fatality predictions IF NO MITIGATION STRATEGIES WERE DEPLOYED. If most states hadn't started "locking down", then YES, this would have spread like wildfire including where you are.

That is the lesson of this so far.

/snip

https://www.democraticunderground.com/10142446993#post278

[dalton99a]

10. Kick

[matt819]

14. A key piece of reporting was buried at the end of the article

Here it is:

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.

On top of this, an untold number of people in New York at the time of the outbreak simply headed home - which pretty much means the entire United States. My point is that it's easy (and in less dangerous times, even fun) to bash New York. But the reality is that there are millions of non-New Yorkers in NYC on any given day, workers, tourists, students, etc. And at some point they left - to go home. You can argue that a travel ban wasn't imposed fast enough. But would you argue that those millions already in NY couldn't go home?

Reports like this are certainly interesting, and I look forward to reading more like them in the coming years. But they're also dangerous at this time. You and I know full well that the doofus in DC is going to bash NY and Gov. Cuomo with this by the weekend, and probably sooner.

[Baclava]

15. Lock it down, shut off all roads bridges airports! Build a wall. No Escape From New York!

[Demsrule86]

17. You forgot the sarcasm tag!

[Baclava]

18. Eh, too late now anyway, we're all gonna be infected