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If Half the Country's Deaths Were in Montana, Would New York Shut Down?
Townhall.com ^ | April 21, 2020 | Dennis Prager

Posted on 04/21/2020 5:39:04 AM PDT by Kaslin

According to The New York Times coronavirus report, as of Sunday, April 19, 2:48 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, there were 35,676 COVID-19 deaths in the United States. Of those deaths, 18,690 were in the New York metropolitan area.

(The New York metropolitan area is generally regarded as consisting of the five boroughs of New York City, the five New York State counties surrounding New York City -- Nassau, Suffolk, Westchester, Rockland and Orange -- and the populous parts of New Jersey and Connecticut.)

That means that more than half (52%) of all deaths in America have occurred in the New York metropolitan area.

What makes this statistic particularly noteworthy is that the entire death toll for 41 of the other 47 states is 7,661. In other words, while New York has 52% of all COVID-19 deaths in America, 41 states put together have only 21% of the COVID-19 deaths. And all the 47 states other than New York, New Jersey and Connecticut have less than half (48%).

Now let us imagine that the reverse were true. Imagine that Georgia and North Carolina -- two contiguous states that, like the New York metro area, have a combined total of 21 million people -- had 18,690 COVID-19 deaths, while metro New York had 858 deaths (the number of deaths in North Carolina and Georgia combined).

Do you think the New York metro area would close its schools, stores, restaurants and small businesses? Would every citizen of the New York area, with the few exceptions of those engaged in absolutely necessary work, be locked in their homes for months? Would New Yorkers accept the decimation of their economic and social lives because North Carolina and Georgia (or, even more absurdly, Colorado, Montana or the rest of what most New Yorkers regard as "flyover" country) had 18,960 deaths, while they had a mere 858?

It is, of course, possible. But I suspect that anyone with an open mind assumes that New Yorkers would not put up with ruining their economic and social lives and putting tens of millions of people out of work because of coronavirus deaths in North Carolina and Georgia, let alone Montana and Idaho (and, for the record, I would have agreed with them).

Even more telling, the media, which controls American public opinion more than any other institution, including the presidency and Congress -- but not churches and synagogues, which is why they loathe evangelicals, traditional Catholics, faithful Mormons and Orthodox Jews -- would not be as fixated on closing down the country if it were killing far more people in some Southern, Midwestern, Mountain or Western states than in New York City.

The media is New York-based and New York-centered. New York is America. The rest of the country, with the partial exception of Los Angeles (also a media center) and Silicon Valley, is an afterthought.

Having grown up and attended college and graduate school in New York, and having lived in three of the city's five boroughs, I know how accurate the most famous New Yorker magazine cover ever published was. The cover's illustration depicted a New Yorker's map of America: New York City, the George Washington Bridge and then San Francisco. The rest of the country essentially didn't exist.

One would have to visit people who had never left their rural village in a developing country to find people more insular than New York liberals, which is what nearly all New Yorkers are.

One of the turning points of my life occurred when I was 24 years old and went to give a talk in Nashville, Tennessee. My assumption, having lived all my life in New York, was that I would be meeting and talking to what essentially amounted to country bumpkins. Not only were they not New Yorkers; they were Southerners.

What I found instead was a beautiful city with kind and highly sophisticated people. No one I met was as cynical as most New Yorkers, who confuse cynicism with sophistication. It was on that trip that I decided to leave New York. When I moved to California two years later, my friends, and every other New Yorker I spoke to on visits back to New York, asked why I left and when I was coming back. To most New Yorkers, to leave New York is to leave the center of the world; it is leaving relevance for irrelevance.

In his latest column, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman inadvertently revealed how New York-centric his view of America is. Friedman, like virtually all his colleagues at The New York Times, opposes opening up any state in America at this time. He writes: "Every person will be playing Russian roulette every minute of every day: Do I get on this crowded bus to go to work or not? What if I get on the subway and the person next to me is not wearing gloves and a mask?"

Only a New Yorker would write those two sentences. In the 40 years I have lived in the second-largest city in America, I have never ridden on the subway or any other intraurban train or bus. In fact, it is common for New Yorkers to look at Los Angeles with disdain for our "car culture." Like the vast majority of Americans everywhere outside of New York City, in Los Angeles, most of us get to work, visit family and friends, and go to social and cultural events by car -- currently the life-saving way to travel -- not by bus or subway, the New Yorker way of getting around.

But Friedman is a New Yorker, and because his fellow New Yorkers walk past one another on crowded streets and travel in crammed buses and subway cars, South Dakotans should be denied the ability to make a living.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: covid19; montana; newyork; prager
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1 posted on 04/21/2020 5:39:04 AM PDT by Kaslin
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To: Kaslin

If illegals kill and rape thousands a year (they do) - would NYC do anything about it?


2 posted on 04/21/2020 5:42:22 AM PDT by 2banana (My common ground with islamic terrorists - they want to die for allah and we want to kill them.)
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To: Kaslin

I’ve long joked about loading up on beans and other fart makers and riding crowded New York City elevators ... just to thank them for all their city has done to the Republic through the years.


3 posted on 04/21/2020 5:44:18 AM PDT by Rurudyne (Standup Philosopher)
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To: Kaslin

4 posted on 04/21/2020 5:45:30 AM PDT by Travis McGee (EnemiesForeignAndDomestic.com)
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To: Kaslin

5 posted on 04/21/2020 5:45:33 AM PDT by ClearCase_guy (If White Privilege is real, why did Elizabeth Warren lie about being an Indian?)
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To: Travis McGee

A rolling incubator


6 posted on 04/21/2020 5:46:48 AM PDT by CMailBag
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To: Kaslin
In his latest column, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman inadvertently revealed how New York-centric his view of America is. Friedman, like virtually all his colleagues at The New York Times, opposes opening up any state in America at this time. He writes: "Every person will be playing Russian roulette every minute of every day: Do I get on this crowded bus to go to work or not? What if I get on the subway and the person next to me is not wearing gloves and a mask?"

Only a New Yorker would write those two sentences. In the 40 years I have lived in the second-largest city in America, I have never ridden on the subway or any other intra urban train or bus. In fact, it is common for New Yorkers to look at Los Angeles with disdain for our "car culture." Like the vast majority of Americans everywhere outside of New York City, in Los Angeles, most of us get to work, visit family and friends, and go to social and cultural events by car -- currently the life-saving way to travel -- not by bus or subway, the New Yorker way of getting around.

But Friedman is a New Yorker, and because his fellow New Yorkers walk past one another on crowded streets and travel in crammed buses and subway cars, South Dakotans should be denied the ability to make a living.

In her first interview on "Fox News Sunday" since 2017, Billionaire House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., spoke to anchor Chris Wallace about the coronavirus pandemic and its effect on Americans.

"People are taking to the streets, pushing back against some of the more stringent restrictions in some states," Wallace said during the interview, which is set to air Sunday on Fox News Channel. "Can you understand why they're doing that?"

Ice Cream Pelosi responded: "No, not, not really because what we have to do is, is, is shelter in place. That is really the answer."

Meanwhile,Nancy, In the real world, not your billionaire world, Our economy/citizens have been brutally raped/abused with the actions of your fellow elites, democrat governors and mediots!

“A shutdown is a broadly destructive solution, to a problem that could have been solved with far more targeted approaches!"

Quarantines only work to keep a small amount of sick people from going out and spreading the disease!

They don’t work to keep the vast majority of healthy people locked inside.

Thanks to HotHunt for this great visual!

If people want to stay home, let them! NO ONE wants to force them to go out!

7 posted on 04/21/2020 5:48:14 AM PDT by Grampa Dave (Are the ChiComs, their ownership of America's, fake news media/CNN, the real Deep Staters?)
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To: Kaslin

Half of the people of New York City do not know where Montana is, or even WHAT it is.

Flyover country is pretty much undifferentiated to them.


8 posted on 04/21/2020 5:49:49 AM PDT by alloysteel (Freedom is not a matter of life and death. It is much more serious than that..)
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To: kalee

Bookmark


9 posted on 04/21/2020 5:53:22 AM PDT by kalee
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To: Kaslin

I really pity folks living in NYC.

For N reasons, where N is a very large number.


10 posted on 04/21/2020 5:53:24 AM PDT by Da Coyote
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To: Kaslin

Don’t forget Washington D.C. Anybody outside the 495 beltway is a bumpkin.

Also same in Boston MA. Worcester is consider the far west. And the people outside that 495 beltway exist only to serve Boston.


11 posted on 04/21/2020 5:54:00 AM PDT by kickstart ("A gun is a tool. It is only as good or as bad as the man who uses it" . Alan Ladd in 'Shane')
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To: Grampa Dave

I’m wondering why the CDC hasn’t updated the reported cases since Sunday. They had been updating their “cases by report date” every day at 4pm eastern. Cases had obviously turned the corner - flattened out. I’m wondering if the 4/20 numbers are actually significantly down and they just don’t want to report them yet. Or maybe they’re waiting to see if the 4/21 numbers are back up. Or maybe it’s just a glitch... But it is odd that just now there is a delay.


12 posted on 04/21/2020 5:54:46 AM PDT by ThunderSleeps ( Be ready!)
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To: Kaslin

Not a chance.


13 posted on 04/21/2020 5:54:54 AM PDT by SoFloFreeper
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To: Kaslin

Keep the quarantine on NY City

open everywhere else.


14 posted on 04/21/2020 5:56:24 AM PDT by PGR88
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To: Kaslin

Remember why we shut down

Between 160 million and 214 million people in the United States could be infected
As many as 200,000 to 1.7 million people could die.


15 posted on 04/21/2020 5:57:27 AM PDT by AppyPappy (How many fingers am I holding up, Winston?)
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To: Kaslin

Maybe. If the disease were serious enough. If cities are incubators of disease, eventually most of the deaths wouldn’t be in Montana, but in big cities - maybe not in NYC, but in places enough like it for New Yorkers to be worried.


16 posted on 04/21/2020 5:59:08 AM PDT by x
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To: Kaslin

That’s what the “experts” told us on March 18th.


17 posted on 04/21/2020 5:59:14 AM PDT by AppyPappy (How many fingers am I holding up, Winston?)
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To: Kaslin

ALL THOSE DEATHS ARE ON THE HANDS OF THE DIMOCRAT leaders of the city. They told people NOT to worry about it. Go to China Town for the new year big blow out. Go to ball games, the movies, the theaters, shop downtown, use the tube, no worries. THEY said everything was okay. THEY killed all those people. BUT NOW, they hide those speeches. Don’t want anyone remembering them. The mayor, governor, all of the Dim leaders were shouting this from the roof tops. No worries. No problem. Won’t happen here. Tell that to the 35,000 dead.


18 posted on 04/21/2020 5:59:29 AM PDT by RetiredArmy (The Bible predicted these type of days. Pray to the LORD GOD for mercy on this Republic.)
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To: ThunderSleeps

They are probably moving bodies to nursing homes so they can be “discovered”.


19 posted on 04/21/2020 6:04:02 AM PDT by Mouton (The media is the enemy of the people.)
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To: Kaslin

Having grown up in Stamford, CT, a suburb of NYC, and as an adult, living on Long Island, another whole suburb of NYC, and now living in hurricane country, aka Louisiana, NYC does not give a rodent’s butt, unless it impacts them directly!


20 posted on 04/21/2020 6:05:58 AM PDT by Terry L Smith
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