Living in proximity to a subway line doesn't necessarily mean you spend more time on the subway than people who live further away, nor does it mean that you use the subway more. Subway commuters who can't afford to live close to a subway line probably live further from their workplaces, too, which would mean they spend more time on the subway and have more transfers between lines. Those people may then carry germs back to their neighborhoods.

The subway is a shared space with poor air quality and many hard surfaces that are touched by many people every hour.

The blog post you are "citing" tries to draw conclusions by zip code in a map that is not granular enough to support the claims. You yourself acknowledge this so I'm not sure why you use that blog post as evidence.

Also, Jeff Harris (the MIT professor who wrote the paper with which the blogger disagrees) is a doctor as well as being an economist. That doesn't mean he is infallible, but I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss his thoughts.

I think it’s pretty clear that having a large portion of the city spend an hour a day packed together with 80 or so other people is going to increase transmission from a droplet spread disease.

No one actually lives in the borough with the most ridership, they just work there.

Rush hour on a subway is about as close as your going to get (no pun intended) to a clear cut ‘yep, this is how it spread’.

The idea that a subway system like New York's (or even more, London's) is NOT a major vehicle of disease transmission is an extraordinary claim that requires evidence more extraordinary than this.

The NYC subway seems to have a pretty unique local microclimate though. I don't know if it's just the lack of regenerative braking or if the close proximity to the iconic steam heating network is also playing a role in this, but compared to most other subway networks, the MTA feels like a living history museum - even if you close your eyes, block your ears and only take in the air. The influence of air heat and moisture on virus spread is quite complicated (evaporation ends some droplet classes, condensation ends others) so it's quite possible that some subway systems are much worse spreaders than others.

I think one thing is NY is testing like crazy. They're actually trying to find out just how many people are infected.

Some countries are still trying to avoid testing. Many Japanese hospitals are turning people away from testing unless they have severe symptoms lasting several days, so naturally, numbers look tiny. And let's be frank, China's numbers just shouldn't be believed.

Or wear masks.

I've seen it plausibly argued that in e.g. Japan, they have a culture of not talking on your phone on the subway, and this substantially reduces transmission.

The vast majority wear masks and the operators wear gloves - and this is when there's not an active epidemic.

You get the impression that a lot of people in Western society would rather risk infection than be seen wearing a mask - defies logic.

You cannot compare situations in the US to situations in Asia since the populations are so different. In Asian countries people wear masks regularly... in the US the Vice President considered it too emasculating even for a HOSPITAL visit. There are plenty of good things about Americans but some of their worst qualities are a perfect match for disease transmission.

Born n raised in Vegas. It’s a technical distinction that most locals don’t understand or care about.

So, what happens in Vegas doesn't stay in Vegas.

Not a contradiction as it is not a direct comparison. Planes have substantially greater ventilation then trains on average.