Talk of a "national pandemic" is obscuring how wildly disparate the toll is.

NYC is over 1,500 deaths. Detroit is near 200, NOLA at 125.

Meanwhile, Philly has 13, DC has 15, Denver has 11. All these and many more are below 10: SF, Balt, Pittsburgh, Charlotte, Austin, Cincy...

Yes, it's early days and other cities may catch up yet. But the shutdowns may in fact have gone into place in time for a lot of them to be largely spared. And we may well end up with a few cities having borne insanely more pain and loss than others.

To drive home this regional disparity further: there are now far more confirmed cases in Paterson NJ, population 149K, than in all of Franklin County, Ohio (Columbus), population 1.3 million. Harrowing story of day in life of Paterson EMTs: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/01/health/coronavirus-emt-workers.html

And the disparities are even greater if one uses metro-area figures. Take Detroit. It's not just the city. Suburban Oakland and Macomb counties have been hammered too. Oakland, Macomb, and Wayne counties are now at 424 deaths combined. Way, way beyond most other metro areas.