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The San Francisco Bay Area shelter-in-place order is being extended through May

sfmayor.org

411–420 of 893 posts

Re: The San Francisco Bay Area shelter-in-place order is being extended through May

#411

I'm lucky enough to have remote work. And I'm sure many HNers have a nice buffer of savings from their tech jobs to weather the storm or are getting paid time off. But can anyone share what it's like to not be in either of these situations? How are your rent lords handling things? I live abroad in a cheap country so I can handle zero income, but I wouldn't be able to last long if rent was $2000+/mo instead of the Yet…

They will do the same thing homeowners will do; not pay. I hope nobody on here owns munis or bank stocks. Or REITs.

The munis and banks all have a direct IV funding line from the Federal Reserve, they mostly have absolutely nothing to worry about. The gloves are entirely off for this one, the Fed can snap up trillions of dollars in toxic mortgages if needed, they've got the greenlight across the board for any and all actions.

The Fed keeps lowering the thresholds (and they'll end up doing a lot more than that in the coming months; most of this won't be short-term credit, they'll switch it to long-term out of necessity):

"Fed expands muni-debt program to cover smaller cities, counties"

"The Federal Reserve expanded the scope and duration of the Municipal Liquidity Facility, a $500 billion emergency lending program aimed at providing short-term credit to state and local governments as they endure the economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic. The U.S. central bank lowered the population thresholds under which counties and cities would be eligible to sell short-term debt to the facility. The new levels are at least 500,000 for counties and 250,000 for cities, down from 2 million and 1 million."

https://www.bondbuyer.com/articles/fed-expands-muni-debt-pro...

Re: The San Francisco Bay Area shelter-in-place order is being extended through May

#412

I'm lucky enough to have remote work. And I'm sure many HNers have a nice buffer of savings from their tech jobs to weather the storm or are getting paid time off. But can anyone share what it's like to not be in either of these situations? How are your rent lords handling things? I live abroad in a cheap country so I can handle zero income, but I wouldn't be able to last long if rent was $2000+/mo instead of the Yet…

I have two commercial leases. Neither landlord is offering a break. Construction is stopped due to government mandate. There is no bailout from the state due to this intervention. There is a high liklihood of mass layoffs and potential bankruptcy.

I'm past the point of annoyance or despair. I've gotten used to the fact that not only do governments do whatever they want, but people like authoritarian action and don't care about externalities.

Re: The San Francisco Bay Area shelter-in-place order is being extended through May

#413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is your reaction to Sweden's COVID track? They didn't shut down daily life, and their hospitals are doing just fine. In fact, COVID cases and deaths have plateaued. Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-52395866

Does it make any difference if they have "plateaued" if there are more active cases today than yesterday? Does it make any difference that the US has not "plateaued" if the number of active cases is rising slower than in Sweden, and the death rate is lower? +-------------+--------------+-----------+--------+-------+ | Country, | Active Cases | Yesterday | Chg | % chg | +-------------+--------------+-----------+------…

It's good to have numbers, but given the wide disparity in testing rates and protocols, it's difficult to come to any significant conclusions based primarily on day-to-day case count.

Death count is at least somewhat less subject to such complications, and even there, it'd be much better to compare 7-day averages to smooth over reporting quirks.

Re: The San Francisco Bay Area shelter-in-place order is being extended through May

#414
post #165

I'm lucky enough to have remote work. And I'm sure many HNers have a nice buffer of savings from their tech jobs to weather the storm or are getting paid time off. But can anyone share what it's like to not be in either of these situations? How are your rent lords handling things? I live abroad in a cheap country so I can handle zero income, but I wouldn't be able to last long if rent was $2000+/mo instead of the Yet…

It's a class divide, unfortunately. The people who are getting hit hardest are the people who were already getting hit hardest. Most of those don't frequent the same internet forums we do.

Also sector divide. Small business owners are getting killed. PPP and EIDL will be a drop in the bucket. Mass conglomerations are coming and in 12 months we'll wonder why Amazon and Walmart and other multinational corps bought everything up.

Re: The San Francisco Bay Area shelter-in-place order is being extended through May

#415
post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you want this to be a simple problem? It isn't a simple problem, not by a long shot and erring on the side of caution seems to be the right way to play this because you are at most 4 weeks away from a serious disaster if you fuck it up. The fact that SF does ok is a result of the shelter-in-place order, without it SF would look like NYC or worse.

Nobody said it was going to be simple. I'm just advocating that it not be completely and totally lacking in stated goals when it's such a severe policy intervention. Those goals could be complex, or detailed, or multivariate, or subject to contingencies and caveats. But they can't be non-existent and they can't be secret. This is a democracy. > The fact that SF does ok is a result of the shelter-in-place order, witho…

It sounds to me as though you do not trust your leaders to have your best interests at heart.

The idea that everybody will go and pick apart the underlying data to support their favorite little theories may have something to do with the decision to keep the inputs confidential.

You get one chance every so many years to vote in a government that you trust, you're going to have to accept that.

Re: The San Francisco Bay Area shelter-in-place order is being extended through May

#416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What evidence is there that the SIP is limited in effectiveness? The existing evidence I am aware of is starkly contra that assertion. Anecdotes of seeing people too close together in the park are not evidence of an ineffective SIP.

It's not that SIP does nothing - it's that past a certain point, the rates are what they are. San Mateo and Santa Clara counties have seen a slight increase in the number of cases last week over the previous week. Other Bay Area counties have seen a slight decrease [1]. I don't see how increased traffic/travel as we're starting to see [2] will do anything other than increase transmissions. [1] https://projects.sfchro…

The rates staying flat rather than going up is already a success, not a sign that SIP has failed.

Re: The San Francisco Bay Area shelter-in-place order is being extended through May

#417

I'm lucky enough to have remote work. And I'm sure many HNers have a nice buffer of savings from their tech jobs to weather the storm or are getting paid time off. But can anyone share what it's like to not be in either of these situations? How are your rent lords handling things? I live abroad in a cheap country so I can handle zero income, but I wouldn't be able to last long if rent was $2000+/mo instead of the Yet…

I have two commercial leases. Neither landlord is offering a break. Construction is stopped due to government mandate. There is no bailout from the state due to this intervention. There is a high liklihood of mass layoffs and potential bankruptcy. I'm past the point of annoyance or despair. I've gotten used to the fact that not only do governments do whatever they want, but people like authoritarian action and don't…

I don't know how the details will actually shake out but the Canadian government this week announced a commercial rent program that seems to make sense. If I understand it correctly basically you pay 25%, your landlord eats 25%, and the remaining 50% is split somehow between federal and provincial funds.

It will be interesting to see how it actually plays out (and now long it lasts) but it seems pretty practical, given the situation.

Re: The San Francisco Bay Area shelter-in-place order is being extended through May

#418
post #360

Serious question: if restrictions aren’t lifted now then will they be? What will be meaningfully different June 1st rather than May 1st? Is it shelter-in-place until we get more testing? Or the AppleGoogle contact tracing? Or is it shelter-in-place until a vaccine... in 18 months? What are the conditions required to start slowly relaxing the shutdown? Edit: I don’t understand the downvotes. I haven’t left my home for…

Probably downvotes because the answer to your question is the same as to 90% of all uninformed questions online - "we don't know". There are so many unknowns, things go day by day or week by week at best. I too get annoyed at the 1000'd idiot asking 'but will I be able to go on holiday in August?'. Not saying you're an idiot, just trying to explain why others, like me, would be annoyed at your post and would want to…

The problem is that is been a month now: not having an answer is flatly unacceptable governance.

Re: The San Francisco Bay Area shelter-in-place order is being extended through May

#419
post #367

I'm surprised we're not seeing plans for some businesses to reopen with restrictions. I think it will be a while before we allow haircuts and manicures again, but I see no reason why we can't increase the types of businesses allowed open. Limiting occupancy, requiring PPE, and enforcing social distancing appear to be reasonable requirements. I hope the politicians and government workers are busy trying to find a midd…

You can start opening things up, it doesn't mean people will go out to eat, get haircuts, visit movie theaters, workout at a gym or travel. As long as the virus is out there and actively spreading, people will voluntarily shelter. Businesses will still go bankrupt as most retail stores and restaurants run at around breakeven in net income. Also there is the liability issue. If we want to get back to normal getting co…

>> If we want to get back to normal getting community spread to 0 should be the goal and we need to keep everything locked down to achieve that.

Do you know what that will cost both in an acute USD fashion as well as the geopolitical and economic chronic fashion? I'm legitimately interested if you've thought through the externalities of this plan.

Re: The San Francisco Bay Area shelter-in-place order is being extended through May

#420
post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, that’s not the way it works. If you want to take people’s livelihoods away from them, you have to justify the seizure, not the other way around. Hypotheses don’t count. Provide actual scientific proof. You’re ruining people’s lives.

The virus is tanking the economy, not the lockdown. Air travel is down 97% even though they are no laws against flying places. You can lift the lockdown if you want, but if people are too afraid to board planes and go to restaurants and bars, you are not going to magically bounce back to 4% unemployment and 2% GDP growth overnight. > If you want to take people’s livelihoods away from them, you have to justify the sei…

>> Air travel is down 97% even though they are no laws against flying places

Sure there is. It's called mass unemployment and closure of non-essential businesses. Why would people fly to branch offices if they're closed?

>> Conversely, you could argue that if you want to take actions that risk killing hundreds of thousands of people

You don't know this to be true. There is plenty of evidence showing lockdowns have limited impact, no impact, or even worse, exacerbate the problem.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/lockdowns-wont-stop-the-spread-...

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