The writer is a senior fellow at Harvard University and advises the UK Department of Health and Social Care
It feels almost quaint now, but in early March I was at a party in Manhattan. People had just about stopped shaking hands, but Sixth Avenue was still teeming. As we were served drinks, gazing out over the bright lights from a glass and steel tower, I was approached by a work-hard-play-hard 20-something who works on Wall Street. “I’m off to Florida tomorrow to sit this thing out,” he confided. “It feels less jam-packed there.”
At the time, I didn’t fully appreciate the implications. But it’s now clear that Covid-19 poses a profound challenge to a significant modern trend: megacities. Big urban centres are the new plague pits. New York City, America’s most crowded big city, has suffered about 23 per cent of all US deaths from the virus; London’s share of UK deaths is also 23 per cent; Madrid about 32 per cent; and Stockholm even more, according to researcher Joakim Book.