NYC is younger and healthier than the US average so these are lower bounds for national average outcomes.

A datum that is hard to square when the deaths are still dominated by the older population. If you had convinced everyone over seventy to move out of NYC last year, their CFR would be a fraction of what it is now.

So the IFR will be lower in the rest of the country than in NYC because... they are going to send everyone over seventy to the Moon or something?

No. I was not claiming it would be lower. Apologies if the framing said it that way. I was just pointing out that we really don't have bounds on this anywhere else.

I'm not sure how that matters. We have a lower bound for an optimistic demographic representation of the country. If NYC is younger and healthier than average and is at 0.2%, why would the lower bound for the country as a whole be lower?

I am actually having a hard time squaring the claim that they are younger than the average. The number of people over 70 that have died in NYC is above the number of people over 40 in many cities across the nation.

That all said, my point is that we don't know the bounds. Period. It could be higher. It could be lower. That is why I said it is conceivable. Probably it is about that value in most places. I am interested in where the data falls.

NYC is on average younger than the broader US population.

And the deaths are concentrated on the older population. They do have younger people. They also have more nursing homes and assisted care. They literally have more of everything.

We're looking at per capita rates though so doesn't matter if they have more of something in absolute terms.

Could. If the agitating factor to severe cases is car exhaust, as an example. There are usually tipping points to that kind of thing.

Look, I agree that I don't know. Just trying to get that uncertainty in the counter claims, as well.

I’m talking about having more number of nursing homes because they have “more of everything”, not making an argument about density and pollution or anything like that.

Ah, yes, I misstook your argument. That said, I do suspect having more nursing homes means they have more people over 60 than most places. Which will skew them to have more deaths, period.

Consider, from all that we have seen, elementary schools could get 100% infection rate on the same population size that NYC nursing homes have and not see the number of deaths they have had. It is not controversial that the IFR is dependent on how many people over 60 you have in your population.

To drive that home some, here in WA, fully 92% of the deaths have been in people over the age of 60. It is quite ridiculous how deadly this is if you are older.