How The Rich Spread COVID-19

The Star Tribune has published a Los Angeles Times article entitled, "The rich infected the poor as COVID-19 spread around the world." From the article:

      Pandemics throughout history have been associated with the underprivileged, but in many developing countries the coronavirus was a high-class import — carried in by travelers returning from business trips in China, studies in Europe, ski vacations in the Rockies.

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      Historians say it may be remembered as the first pandemic that spread, to a significant extent, from the affluent to the lowly. It hopscotched around the world aboard commercial and private jets, quickly appearing in Japan, South Korea, Thailand and the U.S.

      In Mexico, some of the earliest cases were detected in prominent business leaders who had traveled in private jets to Vail, Colo., for a ski vacation. They included a top banking official, the chief executive of the company that makes Jose Cuervo tequila and the chairman of Mexico’s stock exchange, Jaime Ruiz Sacristan, who died from the virus in mid-April.

      Stories of callous behavior by elites have spread with the virus. A Bollywood singer refused to self-isolate upon returning from London, then attended three parties, forcing hundreds of families to go into quarantine. The daughter of a politician in Malaysia flouted a lockdown but got off with a $184 fine.

      In March and April, South Korea saw a new wave of infections among privileged offspring returning from universities abroad. One student who had a fever reportedly swallowed 20 acetaminophen pills to evade detection by airport temperature scans; another broke quarantine multiple times to go to Starbucks in Seoul.

      In Nigeria — where two in five survive on $1 a day or less — some of the first 19 patients were political figures, including the president’s chief of staff, Abba Kyari. Some were believed to have been infected while traveling in Europe or Egypt. ...

 In a similar vein, the Daily Mail reports that "Nearly 420,000 of NYC's richest residents have fled the city amid the pandemic with smartphone data showing Upper East Side and West Village populations down by 40 percent."

     For its report, The Times looked at data provided by New Mexico-based Descartes Labs, a geospatial imagery analytics company.

     The company used anonymous smartphone geolocation data to track where New York City residents were in February, and whether they left the city or not after the pandemic. 

     The sample population was 140,000 people from nearly every census-counted neighborhood in the five boroughs.  

      While smartphone data is not perfect, and not every resident owns a smartphone, it provides a general idea about New Yorkers' mobility. 

      Between March 1 and March 15, there was a small trickle out of New York. But, after Mayor Bill de Blasio announced the city's schools would be shut, there was a mass exodus.

       The Times found that residents from neighborhoods where the median income is $90,000 or less (the bottom 80th percentile) stayed in their homes.  

      About 10 percent of those is the top 10th percentile fled and about 25 percent of the top 5th percentile did the same.

      However, more than one-third - 35 percent - of the top one percent - escaped to summer homes in Long Island, upstate New York, or other states.

      According to CNBC, the top one percent of New York City earns bout $2.2 million per year on average and the top five percent annual income is about $480,780.

       The data is consistent with other reports of wealthy New York City residents having fled. 

       People that live in vacation towns, such as the Hamptons in Long Island and the Catskills in upstate, complained that their grocery stores were being emptied by city people who were living in their summer homes. 

      Last month, officials said the price of rental homes in the Hamptons soared from $5,000 per month to more than $30,000 for a two-weeks period.

      Small town populations practically doubled as Big Apple residents fled to their summer homes, but locals said city dwellers were bringing COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, with them.

     Cases in Suffolk County, where the Hamptons, began jumping by nearly 1,000 in a single-day and deaths by 100 in one day. However, the region only has 2,710 total hospital beds and 322 ICU beds. 

     In upstate New York, Rensselaer County's county executive Steve McLaughlin even appealed to Governor Andrew Cuomo to ban travel from New York City, but to no avail.