[nostromo]

> That we were not hit as bad is not coincidental

Well, you don't know that. There are states and countries that have not gone to "shelter-in-place" extremes and have been outperforming California.

New York is special in America. It's very dense, and every time you get on a subway train, which most of the city does every working day, you're sharing a cramped space with hundreds of random individuals. It's not hard to see why they've been hit harder than anywhere in the US.

To pretend the only possible difference is a binary distinction between lockdown or not is reductionist ad absurdum.

[numpad0]

One upside of living near Tokyo is that I can say “I’ve seen denser than that” in arbitrary contexts

[raz32dust]

Parent comment is nowhere claiming that it is the only reason. Given that there wasn't enough testing capacity, contact tracing capacity or hospital capacity, what would you have differently? And on what basis?