Coronavirus Impact III

[puredrifting]

California is still on a lockdown and their cases are still very high.

This I concur. I live in the small county above Los Angeles County and up until December, we were pretty sheltered from the insane
infection rates LA County was going through. Lately though, our infection rate in my county is through the roof, our hospitalization rates
are way up and death rates as well.

People here generally have seemed to not be doing the stupid things that cause infection rates to skyrocket, everywhere I go, everyone is wearing a mask,
people are at least trying to distance. I'm frankly not surprised by LA county's rates but I'm pretty surprised that ours, per capita lately have been as high or
higher here as we were doing VERY well last year.

We have much lower population density and what has seemed to be pretty good compliance with health orders but nonetheless, it's getting pretty
bad here. Wife's co-worker's husband just died of it, friend from our hiking group a few weeks ago, we have several friends who have it.

I'm really hoping that the rates peak soon then start to go down.

[ahalpert]

Meanwhile all of the Governors who were recently locking everything down suddenly, and inexplicably, want to open their economies back up.

I wonder why....

hunh? ny is open but they're talking about an upcoming lockdown

the only thing that opened up more is that just recently restaurants in orange zones can now have indoor dining BECAUSE OF A STATE SUPREME COURT RULING THAT THE GOVERNOR IS FIGHTING

it's almost like this virus is serious or something

[hojomo]

I'm glad you deleted and rewrote your post. I saw it and have no doubt it would have merited an instant swing of the ban hammer. Utterly shameful.

can only imagine.

gotta say there really is a tiny minority of guys itching to amp up the venomous rhetoric on any topic inexorably bound up in politics and it's getting pretty old. I have pretty resolute views on the opposite side of things and I agree with the forum's general attitude to cutting out the politics. I grew up in Texas and moved thousands of miles away and let me tell you guys...I am still inundated on a daily basis with your ideas. No one is wondering where you're coming from and I sure don't enjoy this site becoming another dumping ground for them

[mcgeedigital]

hunh? ny is open but they're talking about an upcoming lockdown

the only thing that opened up more is that just recently restaurants in orange zones can now have indoor dining BECAUSE OF A STATE SUPREME COURT RULING THAT THE GOVERNOR IS FIGHTING

it's almost like this virus is serious or something

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[ahalpert]

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I'm sorry, but that Newsweek study is bunk. It only has 2 countries in the "voluntary measure" category - S. Korea and Sweden. Sweden has since imposed lockdowns, laws, and penalties, so even they are no longer instituting voluntary measures only. And IMO both Koreans and Swedes are way more likely to do what the government asks them to do than we Americans are, so voluntary measures might have worked better for them. That Newsweek article itself says:

However, the researchers also acknowledged that the study had limitations, and noted that "cross-country comparisons are difficult," since nations may have different rules, cultures, and relationships between their government and citizenry.

Lastly, one of the 2 authors of that study co-authored the Great Barrington declaration. It's not like this study was conducted by people who liked lockdowns and found out they were wrong. It makes me suspicious of the study design.

I wonder if the private parties bit in Chicago is at the root of the troubles in California. It's certainly what I see at weddings - people relax their safeguards more than they do anywhere else.

And the bit about cuomo is only surprising if you dont know Cuomo. It's a misconception that Cuomo and de blasio (mayor nyc) are lockdown-happy. They've always tried to keep the cheddar flowing. de Blasio went out to eat in chinatown in jan and feb to show people it was safe when we still thought of it as a China problem. When NYC was the worst hotspot in the world and about to go into its first lockdown, de blasio tweeted that everyone should go for one last bar crawl to save their local bars. De blasio went to war with the teachers union in september because he wanted the schools open but teachers wanted an increase in test positivity rate to trigger an automatic shutdown, which they won and later happened. Cuomo and de blasio have been using local targeted lockdowns in local hotspots. I'm sure the real estate moguls are putting pressure on cuomo now that ny commercial real estate is in the toilet, but if we blow up again like we did last march you can bet he'll be locking down.

[Run&Gun]

I'm sorry, but that Newsweek study is bunk. It only has 2 countries in the "voluntary measure" category - S. Korea and Sweden. Sweden has since imposed lockdowns, laws, and penalties, so even they are no longer instituting voluntary measures only. And IMO both Koreans and Swedes are way more likely to do what the government asks them to do than we Americans are, so voluntary measures might have worked better for them. That Newsweek article itself says:



Lastly, one of the 2 authors of that study co-authored the Great Barrington declaration. It's not like this study was conducted by people who liked lockdowns and found out they were wrong. It makes me suspicious of the study design.

I wonder if the private parties bit in Chicago is at the root of the troubles in California. It's certainly what I see at weddings - people relax their safeguards more than they do anywhere else.

And the bit about cuomo is only surprising if you dont know Cuomo. It's a misconception that Cuomo and de blasio (mayor nyc) are lockdown-happy. They've always tried to keep the cheddar flowing. de Blasio went out to eat in chinatown in jan and feb to show people it was safe when we still thought of it as a China problem. When NYC was the worst hotspot in the world and about to go into its first lockdown, de blasio tweeted that everyone should go for one last bar crawl to save their local bars. De blasio went to war with the teachers union in september because he wanted the schools open but teachers wanted an increase in test positivity rate to trigger an automatic shutdown, which they won and later happened. Cuomo and de blasio have been using local targeted lockdowns in local hotspots. I'm sure the real estate moguls are putting pressure on cuomo now that ny commercial real estate is in the toilet, but if we blow up again like we did last march you can bet he'll be locking down.

I think there is probably something to going out to eat being safer than a private party. Most restaurants I've eaten in during the pandemic have been well controlled and usually with not a lot of people. Whereas the video's that surface of some of the get-togethers at people's homes have been free-for-alls.

The whole school thing is a hornets nest. Most parents and politicians want them physically in school. And of course the actual people who are stuck in a room with them 6-8 hours a day, do not. Schools are basically petri dishes with books, lockers and tater-tots in the best of times, much less during a pandemic. One of my audio guys had to spend the two weeks before Christmas in quarantine, because his wife, a teacher, contracted CV.

Did a shoot several days ago with a commercial real estate developer located right outside DC and he doesn't think offices will ever return to anywhere close to their pre-pandemic levels, especially after the corporate world has seen what can be done from working at home.

[puredrifting]

Did a shoot several days ago with a commercial real estate developer located right outside DC and he doesn't think offices will ever return to anywhere close to their pre-pandemic levels, especially after the corporate world has seen what can be done from working at home.

We did a live stream from a trade show from a huge hotel in Denver last year in Autumn for a commercial Real Estate trade group. We live streamed for four days with them, they had an audience of about 1500 high end real estate developers, owners and management companies,
lots of big players whose names you would know. On the last night, we had dinner in a fancy restaurant and my partner and I were discussing how glad we were that we are not in the commercial real estate business in 2020/21. I don't see that market rebounding to anywhere near what it has historically been.
Ever. They will adapt and change, but many billions of dollars in this sector are being lost worldwide because of the lockdowns, employers have seen that they can still run a successful business with a good portion of their employees who worked in cubicle farms
working from home.

There is a fundamental fear in that business that the pie has shrunk and will continue to shrink worldwide because of the havoc that CV has wrought in the commercial real estate space. It reduces capital expenditures and the bottom line to have
a large portion of staff working from home or only coming into the office on a 2 day/3 day split to reduce employee density. If you are working your admin staff in a 2/3, 3/2 split, you only need a small portion of the offices and cubicles you needed before.

[ahalpert]

Their loss may be someone else's gain. Residential housing costs are nutso in places like NYC and LA/SF. It wouldn't kill people if the housing stock increased from to converted office spaces. (Sort of like all the post-industrial hipster haunts like Williamsburg where people live in old factories.)

If office workers are doing 2/3 office/home, then they'll still need to live a reasonable distance from the office and thus the population density probably won't change. (Although I guess that maybe it becomes more feasible to fly across the country for your two days at the office and then fly back to your remote ranch. Basically the opposite balance of the 2-day weekend at home, 5-day workweek.) we shall see.... big tech has been expanding their office footprint lately, but possibly just because their business is booming and space is cheap.

[Run&Gun]

Their loss may be someone else's gain. Residential housing costs are nutso in places like NYC and LA/SF. It wouldn't kill people if the housing stock increased from to converted office spaces. (Sort of like all the post-industrial hipster haunts like Williamsburg where people live in old factories.)

If office workers are doing 2/3 office/home, then they'll still need to live a reasonable distance from the office and thus the population density probably won't change. (Although I guess that maybe it becomes more feasible to fly across the country for your two days at the office and then fly back to your remote ranch. Basically the opposite balance of the 2-day weekend at home, 5-day workweek.) we shall see.... big tech has been expanding their office footprint lately, but possibly just because their business is booming and space is cheap.

I'm hearing it both ways. Like you say, some of the big techies are snatching up available (office) space, because there is a glut of inventory right now and cheap, but also seeing some landlords jack up the rent on tenants that are still there.

[DLD]

It all depends on the markets. In some - location, location, location - the office prices are still high enough to keep things as they are. In others, offices can be indeed profitably converted into apartments. In NYC, the local powers are talking into converting them into "affordable housing". Well, if the state pays the bills, the developers will jump at the opportunity. And the taxpayers won't have much say.

Then there's the retail sector. The online sales went from ~ 5% of the total a decade ago to ~ 15%. And there are ~ 1,500 major malls structures built since the 1950's. The conversion costs ain't tiny but the municipalities don't want eye sores either. Some malls will probably be bulldozed over and turn into parks, others converted into housing, others still into recreational spots.