What about Chicago, Los Angeles, Atlanta, San Francisco, Houston, Boston, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Jose...?
California has three of the 10 largest cities in the United States and the whole state of California has slightly more than 28,000 cases, a little over 10% of the total cases in New York. You also have to consider that California receives most of the direct flights from China. I just checked, New York gets no direct flights from China.
Lastly, New York has three times as many cases (226,198) as the next city on Worldometer’s list, New Jersey (75,317).
These numbers really don’t make sense.
When they go back and research this in detail I bet you’ll find that close contact in trains and buses is the single biggest factor in spreading the disease. Between the subways and commuter bus and rail service, this would explain why NYC and its surrounding suburbs have more cases than almost the rest of the country combined.
Flights from Europe. Filthy and crowed mass transit. Elevators. D-rat mayor and governor. Maybe deliberate Chinese carriers. Maybe colder weather and less sun (vitamin D). ... Lots of possible explanations reasons.
A few random thoughts, some of which are not scientifically verified, but are just common sense:
1. NYC has the densest population of any US city. SF is second. But most of the others, I believe, have large suburban - aka “less crowded” - areas.
2. There might not be any direct flights from China to NYC, but there are about one million Chinese visitors each year. And a virus does not care if it has to go through L.A. first.
3. NYC and the NJ cities across the water from NYC are one huge metropolis. Many people from NJ work in NYC, as they are connected by bridges, tunnels, and subways. New York State has about twice as many people as NJ. That said, the NJ cities do not have nearly the population density as NYC.
4. People in NYC are packed into huge apartment buildings. They pass each other in the lobbies, and there is a lot of close walking on the streets. Easy way for human-to-human transfer. And who knows how well the air in those buildings is filtered/conditioned?
5. NYC has a huge number of skyscrapers. If someone sneezes or coughs, the trapped virus will float around in the air until people inhale it.
6. Travel in NYC comprises a lot of mass transit (subways and buses) and taxis. Again, people in close proximity, so it would be easy for the virus to get transferred from one person to another.
Bottom line: NYC and cities in NJ are petri dishes for the transmission of a virus.