KCRag Forum

Highlander wrote: ↑Fri Mar 27, 2020 1:52 pm I am curious if KCraggers think Corona Virus will cause a pause or reversal in the trend among people (particularly young people and retirees) who were choosing to live a more dense urban lifestyle and embrace viable public transportation systems. It's clear that the US epicenters are denser areas like NYC, NJ and New Orleans.

Wondered about that too. Will be interesting to see long term and even permanent changes due to this after dust settles. IE, with companies setting up processes/infrastructure to allow more to work from home than ever, will it become commonplace permanently impacting long term needs for office space? If so, the US/1st World could end up with a large surplus of office space and cater to WFH culture as a primary future direction.

There could be a lot of social behaviors changed too even when over with. Unfortunately long term even more may have a fear of public transit from bus, train to air travel. Might even change the dynamics of how the economy works and societies function. The longer this lingers, the more likely permanent changes.

It will increase use over the 2-4 years after things get back to normal and we're past holds and income incentives. Once people can get out and do them, job losses will lead to a dramatic increase in car repos among your bottom 30-40% of incomes.

The work from home demographic will be above this income level and will be able to afford a car, even if it's older or lower end.

I would expect more low end income uniformity among transit users.

brewcrew1000 wrote: ↑Fri Mar 27, 2020 2:07 pm I don't know, nobody is really taking this that seriously. If anything it could increase people living in urban areas because I feel like rents on apartments and commercial really estate are going to drop. From a jobs standpoint the harder hit areas are the more suburban Sunbelt cities. Boston, nyc, Chicago don't seem to be impacted that badly economically.

I would expect rents to drop in areas they were already dropping and keep increasing where they were increasing, to shift ever more patchwork around income.

I would expect that demand for more in house amenities to grow among the rich and current high end multi family housing will be able to provide that. If you have the money you will move to a facility with the space for in house medical services and special contracts to bring food in direct to units during an emergency.

Your lower incomes, but still above $100-150k will demand services nearby to limit travel needed with contracts for priority space in facilities shared among nearby buildings. Not a private hospital, but fully owned space in a co-op model.

The rich is absolutely taking this seriously, they'll spend money on the problem over the next 2-3 years.

The cities that get hit first in a pandemic will be the ones with the most international travel -- that they tend to be denser and have more public transit is sort of incidental to that. People still flocked to NYC after 9/11, and it's hard for me to believe that this will be more discouraging than that. (Plus, the situation in NYC would be much better if not for the fact that both their president and their mayor are huge morons that actively encouraged everyone to do nothing to protect themselves until it was way too late. That's a fixable problem.)

kas1 wrote: ↑Sun Mar 22, 2020 9:33 pmMy point is that there's no harm in making a serious effort at it [containment] once you've already ordered everyone to stay at home ... Surely there's a limit to how long this can go on before someone in some position of power decides it's time to stop reacting and start planning.

Governors’ coronavirus pacts could thwart Trump goal of reopening country

“We will combat this virus by working together and remaining consistent across our borders,” said Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont.

For being under a lockdown, Loose Park sure had some decent activity today.

http://mobile.twitter.com/navasphoto/st ... 3678617600

Next concern... social unrest leading to difficulties to contain, especially with urban poor according to Red Cross. Now occurring in Italy and China.

Here in Florida there's concern with NY'rs coming in droves not just bringing COVID but also creating more demand for already limited supply at hospitals and stores. Snow birds typically would be heading north soon that would help but may not happen as much. There's also concern with Gov not being transparent - deaths are starting to occur in senior centers but which ones are not being disclosed. Tampa and Miami major papers also not allowed at Gov briefings.

There could be a lot of secondary+ situations not yet thought about brewing over next few weeks/months that could contribute to spreading.

Expanded Social Disting April 30.

Concourse Park in the Old Northeast has been full of people who seem to be ignoring the Mayor's order. Some appear to be from the immigrant/refugee communities, and might not be able to read the city notices about gatherings in the park.

Field hospital being set up in New York City's Central Park across from Mt. Sinai Medical Center.

https://www.instagram.com/p/B-VqIVVFlu5 ... BHfGSTpDEI

Bell curves - lifeforms seem to follow these mathematical notions. And interestingly John Hopkins and this NM dude seem to follow this stuff carefully. And of course what's interesting is the older affected countries of China, Korea and italy have peak the former two entirely thru with the pandemic in 1 month - of course China lied significantly on # of infected (do the reverse math from deaths). BUT optimism can be gleamed from US in that we seem to be crowning - problem is that the US is 50 different curves thus look at the NM dude's site for state data. CO is also peaked (hopefully) but this all means that if we just stay put thru the duration (Mid-May to June??) and we see the peak in the next 2 weeks then back to a normal or new normal.

Hopkins - note the yellow bar graph DAILY INCREASES in bottom right for each country. Compare and contrast countries. https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html

NM Dude - https://covidtracking.com/data/

Detroit is turning their convention center into a 900+ bed hospital.

New Orleans has converted their convention center into a hospital.

Someone is dying of COVID in New York City every 6 minutes -- ABC World News Tonight.

In NYC: over 5,000 police officers have called in sick; 960 police officers have tested positive. 250 firefighters have tested positive.

ToDactivist wrote: ↑Mon Mar 30, 2020 5:17 pm BUT optimism can be gleamed from US in that we seem to be crowning

Maybe in a few weeks, maybe less, but not crowned yet. NYC might be peaking but New Orleans, Detroit and Chicago are still hotspots. Georgia and Ohio seem to be becoming next hotspots. And Indy has a lot of deaths increasing for its size. Maybe Texas soon after. Some virus experts also expect a 'second wave' in US given we don't have the containment abilities of some of Asia (and they seem to be having mini second waves). Given no one has immunity, seems plausible.

Also wonder about discrepancies in death reports, if in some cases they could be bias defined. There is apparently no international or even US standard for determining cause of death. A person with terminal cancer that gets another condition (such as flu, COVID, whatever) might be counted as a cancer death rather than other condition. Russia appears to be attributing COVID deaths to flu (COVID deaths low but flu deaths up over 35% from last year). China accused of doing similar more recently. Might even be occurring at hospital or state level in US depending on biases.







https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/202 ... untry.html
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

We're really focking it up.

Asian virus experts are saying the W is making a mistake not using masks for general public, but there aren't even enough for hospitals.

Maybe the Feds should buy 3M's N95 mask patent, make it a free license (similar to open source model) to world and work with supply chains around world to boost manufacturing to 100s of millions per week or even per day - as one of highest priorities. Hospitals should first get more than enough share, then most at risk, then essential job workers, then rest of workforce/general public. We need to find a way to get workforce going again but more cautiously than the Trumpian way. A KC company came up with a shield for hospitals as well, like a motorcycle helmet shield w/out the helmet. Maybe if general workforce could get these too.

Does the general public need N95s? Not that anyone seems to know for sure, but wearing masks personally seems to be more about coughing/sneezing (infecting others) - and touching your own face/nose when you're out in the dirty, dirty world. I think regular surgical masks or covering of the mouth and nose would do the same thing and provide many of the same protections. The respirator masks are more for personal protection when dealing closely/personally with infected people.

At least that's how I understand it.

Wouldnt hurt to have N95s produced cheaply in hyper mass production. Need to get workforce back so higher quality the better, even if overkill.

earthling wrote: ↑Tue Mar 31, 2020 9:20 am Asian virus experts are saying the W[est] is making a mistake not using masks for general public, but there aren't even enough for hospitals.

The West, to be fair, will simply not wear masks forever. This virus is going to become endemic to the species, similar to influenza. Meaning the Chinese and S. Korean efforts, while admirable, are temporary. We humans will all get this bug (which means 70-80% in actuality as some people will avert it via herd immunity). Its protein coating seems to bond -- hard -- with one of our species-universal cell receptors, and it is wildly contagious. Humanity cannot become asocial.

The best hope now is symptom reduction via the various possible treatments, and eventually worldwide vaccination. For the next few months, the herd is getting culled, and we can either try to achieve a reduction in deaths by quarantine or we can allow the bigger death curve and return to "normalcy."

^Not wear masks forever but until virus is manageable, to slow down hospital loads if anything. Need to get workforce back but lawsuits will rise if most forced to go back to work w/out protection or even perceived protection. Need to find the right balance and I favor getting workforce back sooner than later, cautiously. Getting workforce back sooner means people WILL be working closely with some who have COVID, which N95 masks could help slow down spreading.

Herd immunity does seem inevitable though as getting a vaccine in mass production is going to take probably a longer time than the majority already acquiring the virus. Slowing down the herd immunity with high quality masks through rest of year may help keep hospital loads (and workplace lawsuits) manageable.

Debate on masks...
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/shoul ... =home-page

Seems WHO and CDC are not recommending masks because there aren't enough for everyone and hospitals are struggling to get them. If troubled countries were flooded with far more masks than needed would be surprised if they still would not recommend using them. Asia public clearly uses them broadly and has better control of spreading, among other reasons.