If Cuomo's preliminary antibody estimates for NYC are correct, actual infection fatality rate in the city is 0.8 percent. Good news: that's far lower than the WHO 3-4 percent estimate. Bad news: NYC isn't near herd immunity, and covid-19 is 8X as deadly as the flu.

NYC didn't exceed medical capacity. Assuming that nothing changes -- no game-changing therapeutics, no vaccine -- to reach herd immunity (optimistic estimate: 60%) would mean some 45,000 deaths in NYC alone.

Social distancing can lengthen the amount of time over which such deaths occur; that would buy time for therapeutics and/or a vaccine. Hotspot testing will need to be extraordinary in a city of such density to prevent serious outbreaks from overwhelming the system.

Barring a deus ex machina, those are the policies that will have to be undertaken -- and that's really the only option. Work from home if you can, protect the elderly and vulnerable, hotspot testing. Which is the same everywhere. But we should be realistic about the numbers.

Now again, this doesn't mean that the risk of dying from covid-19 is applicable everywhere. The infection fatality rate should be similar -- the virus isn't different in NYC or Wyoming -- but the infection rate will differ wildly because NYC is so crowded and populous.

In a normal year, there are between 50,00 and 60,000 deaths in NYC. Until the most optimistic herd immunity numbers are reached, there would be 45,000 added to those rolls (not accounting for crossover deaths that would have occurred from other causes this year).