I like these comparisons because people forget about something that happened earlier. New York had a horrendous epidemic run, probably made worse by bad policies, but somehow Governor Cuomo parades himself around as some kind of coronavirus genius, while Florida, which had its surge just in the last couple of months, gets berated for not having a severe enough lockdown, etc. This chart really tells you all you need to know. Thanks to Y. Weiss on Twitter. I think Florida’s population might be a little older than New York’s as well. While the level of cases looks similar, I think if New York had been testing in the manner and at the rate Florida has been, reported cases would have been much higher there, so the case fatality rate would look closer to Florida’s, but the per capita rate would still be horrendously worse, like two and a half times worse. With those kind of outcomes, if I were Cuomo I wouldn’t be writing a book and I would keep my mouth shut. There are some pretty funny title suggestions for his book floating around on Twitter.
The Healthy Skeptic is a website about the health care system, and is written by Kevin Roche, who has many years of experience working in the health industry. Mr. Roche is available to assist health care companies through consulting arrangements through Roche Consulting, LLC and may be reached at 
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We certainly don’t know enough about transmission mechanisms, but there is one very notable difference between NY and FL: the number of passengers per subway car.
In addition to not implementing measures early enough … and sending sick patients to nursing homes,
1. NY kept subways running to provide transport for people with “essential” jobs. Yet, when ridership halved, the MTA (controlled by the guvner, not the mayor) reduced the number of cars, keeping crowding (social distance measured in mere inches) the same.
2. Only after about 6 weeks (when homeless people started taking up permanent residence on subway cars) did the MTA find it useful to actually CLEAN the cars. Stopping service every night, with the excuse of cleaning and disinfecting, was actually a good way to get the bums off the cars.