There are lots of statements from epidemiologists going back to March who brought up some pretty basic ideas, like pointing out how the case fatality rates were misleading because we were detecting most deaths (and possibly overestimating them by including people who might have otherwise died without being infected by covid) but probably not catching most of the cases. It seems like most of them accepted the lockdown in March/April when little was known about covid but are dismayed at the later response in Anglosphere countries.

Dr. John Ioannidis is an example of somebody who has calmly shared this kind of perspective. Some of his YouTube videos were taken down at one point for being inappropriate or misleading. This is a Stanford epidemiologist who is one of the most cited academics in the world.

What's surprising to me is how the mood of panic in Canada has not changed a whole lot from the early days when case fatality rates of 3-7% were reported in places like Wuhan to now where there are serology studies and the fatality rate for most age cohorts are more like 0.1-0.001% (e.g. the Geneva serology study that I posted in the Canadian covid thread).

I don't think you can say your mitigation policies are rational if they don't change when data improves and death risk estimates go down by 10x or more.

In the Canada thread, a lot of the updates revolve around posting case counts with little context (meaningless; this is not good data about prevalence and the risk gradient across age cohorts is huge so it doesn't tell you much about health risk either), or anecdotal articles (some guy in China got reinfected we think, or a 19 year old died of unknown health status died somewhere).

Pushback against any covid measures of any kind tends to be the same:
- You're killing grandma just because you want more money.
- It's not so bad anyway. Nothing to see here folks. PS, make sure you quarantine for 14 days if you come back into Canada from abroad, whether you test negative or not (this policy being set by a government that refused to close the border to China until something like mid-March).
- We don't know to a high precision what all of the covid risks are, so let's implement a bunch of novel economic restrictions.

It's clear that there's a lot more going on here than a dispassionate analysis of the epidemiological and economic data. I have a feeling years from now, looking back, this will be seen as a huge debacle. At least if Western society doesn't go farther down the tubes.

^^I don't want to post it a third time. Read Post #9897 about the lockdown plusses and minuses as seen by experts in BOTH epidemiology and economics as well as other fields (the "pushback" is much more authoritative and broad than 123's assertion): https://skyscraperpage.com/forum/sho...41619&page=495

To be clear I was writing about the pushback from random posters in that thread, not the discussion of epidemiologists and economists. It's hard to tell what people are pushing back against; often it just seems like it's anything perceived as "minimizing" the significance of covid. I think this represents a significant current in the society I live in, and the dominant media narrative. I think a lot of people feel that they are vaguely pushing in a positive direction by advocating for people to take the pandemic more seriously. You could do worse I guess but you could do better by being clear-headed and transparent about risk.

Scientists unfortunately are not free from their own political pressures. I was reading an opinion piece by a researcher who was looking at ways to incorporate heterogeneity in infection and transmission risk into models for calculating herd immunity. The threshold dropped from around 70% to around 40% when adopting the more sophisticated model. What was surprising is that he mentioned that they had to do some soul searching before publishing, because they worried about the negative impact of publishing a finding that could make people take the pandemic less seriously.

This highlights some problems in our culture right now. The role of science in our culture is a bit strange, with some having adopted "scientism" (mixing up science with normative claims, treating scientists as celebrities or oracles) and there being pressure for scientists to act politically. It's hard to keep a barrier between science, data, and models and then the philosophy or politics of decision making and public communication. And some people are not even aware of the distinction.

Furthermore there is a replication crisis in academia and publication bias is a part of that. It's a simple fact that you can't have valid research findings and researchers who pick and choose what novel findings to publish on the basis of what seems good or bad, even if they mean well.

I debated making a thread for this, but it overlaps with this thread in a lot of ways:

https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/27/tech/...ote/index.html

Another major tech company either saying "WFH through most of 2021", or now flat out "F it, work from wherever now". I have to wonder if this is the beginning of a huge domino fall in society where major tech jobs now just become remote. That has implications for cities, but maybe not in negative ways. It might be harder to justify the kinds of skyscraper construction we all know and love if there's not a huge need anymore for a gleaming glass tower with a tech signature on it. But..... maybe what this means is cities can become much more transient in some ways? If you can work remotely permanently..... what's to stop you from becoming a digital nomad? Hopping across cities, renting short-term, working in co-working spaces, while enjoying the city life?

Maybe that's too extreme for most people, but this seems to be a start to a new era.....

Agreed...work half-time from a vacation spot for a couple weeks, move on a whim...

The big problem for tech workers is going to be if you can work just as well from home or anywhere than why not just hire cheap tech workers in Bangladesh?

I know someone who works for Okta! She'll be psyched not to have to commute, considering they have a young daughter.

It isn't tech companies, it's all major companies.

My family works in the auto industry, in Metro Detroit, GM, Ford and Chrysler are all stay-at-home till deep into 2021, at the earliest. And all the suppliers have followed their lead.

But no one thinks that companies aren't gonna go back to offices post-vaccine. Major companies, tech and otherwise, have signed massive long-term leases during the pandemic. Facebook, Apple, Google, Amazon, have signed huge office leases in major cities in recent months.

Manufacturing is different because there are a lot of expensive plants and capital equipment, of course, not to mention physical supply chains. Professional services also require a high degree of interpersonal relationships, which will always be former over dinner and drinks rather than video calls. Tech is most exposed to remote working because of the nature of both the work and the people involved. The concentration of tech jobs and talent in Silicon Valley doesn’t really disprove this - if people are working in offices then of course talent will gather in one physical location, and there are of course personal relationships that are important (though much less than in a adviser/client type business). There are just fewer impediments than in other sectors.

Right, I understand there are practical differences for remote work across industries and disciplines. But my point is that the current pandemic has the same practical effect across all industries - work remote, if at all possible, till there's a vaccine.

Great posts, agree whole-heartedly!

Assuming you're American...

Within the U.S.: please have a good accountant. You will be liable for local taxes where ever you work remotely.

Outside of the U.S.: be careful not to run afoul of local tax, labor, and immigration laws.

Oh of course.... This will probably be a growing thorn governments will have to deal with in the post-pandemic world. For example, as a US citizen, I can go over to the UK for a month, then hop over to the EU for up to 90 days, Israel, etc all working remotely as a "visitor" without a visa. Not saying it's moral, but I think it's pretty legal to an extent. The problems start to arise when you overstay your welcome in any given country and need to fall back on a traditional visa. However, there really aren't solid visas for digital nomads yet. A few countries (Bermuda,others) are starting to jump on it, but for the most part, the traditional visa system is geared towards folks that are either being hosted by a company to work in that country, or a tourist visa where you aren't allowed to work. However, in the visitor visa situation, it's more geared towards prevent people from walking down the street and taking a local job while they are there.

Personal Opinion:

Urbanity will not die if we no longer work from offices. People will desire wanting to be around culture, restaurants, convenience, etc. What will happen is might see the unwinding of the "superstar" city, with greater dispersal to other medium, regional centers.

Paris -> Lyon, Toulouse, Strasbourg, etc

London -> Manchester, Bristol, Leeds, etc

NY, LA -> The list is endless, from Omaha to Brimingham, AL

In other words, urbanity will spread out, with people taking up areas from Lexington, KY to Lancaster, PA as examples of smaller, more localized urbanism.

So this might not be very obvious, but I'd bet that most governments don't consider it legal for you to work remotely from their sovereign territories without a work permit even if you enter on a valid tourist visa. Many people do it because it is currently hard to enforce, but an employer could get into a lot of trouble if their workers are illegally working from a place where they do not have a proper work permit. Especially if that employer does business in that territory. A lot of large companies have policies that do not allow workers to do unauthorized work while abroad.

What occurs to me is this: While it may be illegal for US companies to hire foreign workers wherever they are unless they have a "green card", it is not illegal to contract for services outside the US. Therefore, why not do so? I don't know if hiring individuals as contractors is OK, but if those individuals band together as some form of co-op or association it should be possible to contract with them to complete a project. No?

I read an article (I believe it was in the NY Times) that said the Uber rich are hopping around the world to the lowest covid infection areas with nice lifestyles. New Zealand etc. To a lesser extent the upper middle class and plain millionaires are hopping around too. Why put up with high covid areas when you can go to less risky places? In New Zealand you can actually go to restaurants and movies and concerts.

Delete

Some of the smaller cities you mention are now hotbeds of covid. Omaha and Birmingham are going up, more than NYC for sure and maybe more than LA. Wherever "essential workers" (often immigrants) are packed together in places like packing plants, you are likely to get outbreaks. Nationwide as the schools open many of the students will get it, but often are asymtomatic, and spread it around to family and friends. Mom and dad may get some sniffles, but Gramps may have a rough time. I have yet to meet a hygenic 7 year old. Any parent knows that. When schools open the germs flow.

People have been moving from Paris to Lyon and Toulouse forever, and for some of the same reasons New Yorkers move to the Sunbelt (cheaper, better weather). I’d live in Lyon in a heartbeat.

You won’t see many Londoners decamp to Manchester or Leeds because they aren’t desirable places to live. They might work from home in the surrounding Home Counties, but in villages or country houses.

The UK is really a uniquely monopolar large country because London has the best of everything, if you can afford it. Cultural center, finance center, political center, legal center, entertainment center, food capital, best weather and closest/best transport links to Europe. There really is not a reason to live in another large UK city unless your family is from there or happen to really want a job at a company that is historically based in that city (or work at a university, etc). Moving to Manchester or Leeds is like moving to Cleveland or Rochester, NY (which someone I know actually did recently, because she just had a baby and her parents are there, not because she had some burning desire to live in Rochester).

It’s just as possible that work from home hurts places that aren’t “cities of choice” because you no longer have to live there just because a career opportunity is there.