Sure let's look at that. I think you might be confusing the deaths in NY city with deaths in NY state. 19189 deaths are in NYC

Let's look at that. So that's 0.22% of the entire population of NYC who have already died. Anti-body tests so what 20-25% of the population has already been infected (that's actually good news). So that puts the case fatality rate at somewhere around 0.8%. (there are error bars so it could be somewhere from 0.6% to 1.1% roughly speaking)

Many people propose just letting it go through the population. Herd immunity ending up at around 70% of the population coming down with it. 70%330 million people0.8% gives you around 1.8 million deaths.

Now maybe NYC just did a shitty job. Maybe we can protect the elderly better. Or maybe that new drug works and we can get that down to .4%-.5% fatality rate. That still almost a million deaths.