Blaming the crime on NYC subways on COVID is a mile high pile of BALONEY. It's the no-bail/no-jail idiocy voted in by the squad of morons known as the City Council. It is responsible for even multiply arrested felons to be turned loose as soon as they're booked, 'cos "black people can't afford bail". To someone with a completely formed brain, the solution would be obvious: don't commit the crime and then, gee, you don't have to come up with bail money. But libtard politicians don't process that way--they have to scrupulously legislate every tiny detail. So you have lowlifes now assaulting people waiting on subways or buses, assaulting people already on the subway or bus, even people just walking down the street and NOTHING HAPPENS TO THEM. They are turned loose in a jiffy to go and do it again to someone else. That this has resulted in the deaths of innocent citizens doesn't seem to matter to DA Bragg and the other Soros-bought-off DAs around the country. So it has become very dangerous to use mass transit; thus, the number of patrons is falling.
But trying to use COVID as an excuse for falling numbers of mass transit patrons is, as I said, a bunch of baloney.