They had the same foot on the banana peel last year, but they weren't dying at this rate.
Here is a link to the study.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.14.20062463v1
The participants were self selected, so people who had symptoms already or had contact with someone who was infected might be more likely to want to be tested, increasing the infection rate in the sample.
Also, the infection rate of normal flu, determined by blood tests, is probably 4 times greater than the number of symptomatic cases. The seasonal flu death rate last year was about .1%, calculated by considering symptomatic cases. If you consider all cases as determined by blood tests, including those with no symptoms, as the Stanford study does, the infection mortality rate for normal flu goes down to .025%, so Covid19 is 10 times as deadly (in study 69/28,000 presumed infected = .24%)
Also the mortality rate in NYC is 13,000/9,000,000 people so if all are infected (hard to believe since only 55% of people tested so far are positive, and you have to have symptoms to be tested) the mortality rate is at least .15%. NYC data is a pretty big sample, compared to 4,000 people self-selected using Facebook
https://www.nhs.uk/news/medical-practice/three-quarters-of-people-with-flu-have-no-symptoms/
https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/2018-2019.html
https://gis.cdc.gov/grasp/fluview/mortality.html
You can also see the nationwide spike in flu-related deaths in national statistics, it blows away the 2017-18 flu already and data is not yet complete.
If your one foot is on a banana peel, it is YOUR responsibility to have a walking stick with you.
In this case the people with existing health maladies must practice precautions more carefully than others. In my own case my malady is age of 80. I was on a crowded cruise ship and the cruise ended on Feb 29th. Almost all of the service crew was from SE Asia and China. My wife is on chemo. We never missed the live stage shows in packed theater every evening. We frequented crowded buffets and Guy Fieri’e Burger joint for lunch. Our dining table was for 8 people and it was full. After the cruise, I have been shopping at grocery stores, picking up food from drive-ins, filling gas in car.
So how I am avoiding getting infected by covid-19? Mainly one thing....washing hands with soap frequently. Even more important, never touch my face with unwashed hands. The covid virus has been found to stay alive for upto 72 hours on metal surfaces. Filling gas in car is the most contaminated place because a hundred people have touched the nozzle handle before you. So as soon as I am done filling gas, I spray hand sanitizer on my hands.
Probability is you are going to get infected touching something much more than air borne droplets. Because those droplets stay in the air only a few minutes before settling on floor. And your hands are not going to touch the floor. But in the grocery store people have touched shopping cart handles, door knobs, examined several fruits and vegetables before picking one to put in their cart. You go to the rest room, and many have touched the lever to flush toilet. Lucky part is the virus can not penetrate tough skin of your hands, but rub your eyes or scratch your nose or touch your mouth and the virus gains easy entry in body.