this is old data from may 15th, but i had not seen it.

it's absolutely stunning.

apparently, 5% of NYC, 420k people, fled from 3/1 to 5/1.

but it was highly concentrated. manhattan basically emptied.

40%+ of some neighborhoods left.

this leads me to a couple of interesting questions:

1. what role did this play in the spread of covid? NYC was the earliest hotspot and most of the flight was EARLY. it was right during peak infection.

were these covid johnny appleseeds spreading it all over the US?

2. could this literally mean that because so many people were not there that chunks of manhattan have actually NOT hit herd immunity?

did they reach it for 50-60% full but perhaps not for fully populated?

that would be wild.

3. how many have decided to simply stay away? if i were the NYC tax man, that second chart would have me in white knuckle nightmares.

if nearly 40% of the top 1% and 30% of the top 5% are not around to pay taxes, i'll bet that's 25-30% of the personal income tax base.

now, maybe they'll come back, maybe not, and maybe they'll seek different tax status this year or maybe not

i know folks who normally work in NYC that literally have tracker aps on their phones to prove they were WFH outside NYC and do not owe tax.

can be a real money saver.

this leads me to wonder if NYC policy was even worse than feared. not only did they maximize deaths with bas hospital and nursing home policy (forcing cov+ into NH to "spare hospitals" but perhaps they were the dandelion that seeded the whole lawn.

and they likely BK'd themselves.

AND manhattan might have screwed up immunity (though this is highly speculative on my part).

this could be a hat trick of policy blunders and possibly a 4 goal game.

graphics come from this article: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/05/15/upshot/who-left-new-york-coronavirus.html

addendum:

apparently, the NYT was at one point speculating about this as well.

thanks to @JDG_1980 for pointing that out. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/07/us/new-york-city-coronavirus-outbreak.html