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-   -   How Is Covid-19 Impacting Life in Your City? (https://skyscraperpage.com/forum/showthread.php?t=242036)

chris08876 May 22, 2020 3:32 PM

Coronavirus Update: NYC Could Begin Reopening By Mid-June

Video Link


Quote:

Mayor De Blasio says that New York City may be ready to resume manufacturing and curbside retail in less than two weeks.

Crawford May 22, 2020 4:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JAYNYC (Post 8929298)
Common sense suggests people should live where they can truly afford to live, not where they can "afford" to live predicated on a dubious "bonus".

No, common sense would suggest that people would live based on their typical salary/wealth structure, which, in the case of many professions, is largely or almost entirely bonus or commission-based.

You think a RE broker has an annual family budget of $0 because they're working on commission? You think someone in financial services is gonna budget based on a once-a-century pandemic?

mhays May 22, 2020 4:12 PM

If those people are earning a lot, they presumably have at least several months of cushion before they need to get into their longer-term investments.

Their home purchase would of course assume a "low case" in the income range, to at least be easy in a moderate downturn. If they earn 2/3 of average for a while, a six-month cushion would make things easy for 18 months.

JManc May 22, 2020 4:27 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Crawford (Post 8929709)
No, common sense would suggest that people would live based on their typical salary/wealth structure, which, in the case of many professions, is largely or almost entirely bonus or commission-based.

You think a RE broker has an annual family budget of $0 because they're working on commission? You think someone in financial services is gonna budget based on a once-a-century pandemic?

We are barely 10 years out of a massive recession. Yes, they should actually and the market was already overvalued prior to Covid-19. If a bonus structure was 2-3 times my base salary adjusted for COL, I would rent a while, save and then put down a huge chuck of change as a my down payment on a home so when something does happen (and it will), I won't be left holding the bag when bonuses dry up and can't afford my mortgage payments.

mrnyc May 22, 2020 4:42 PM

fulton houses


http://i1340.photobucket.com/albums/...psvnuafkku.jpg

10023 May 22, 2020 7:50 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JAYNYC (Post 8929298)
Common sense suggests people should live where they can truly afford to live, not where they can "afford" to live predicated on a dubious "bonus".

Again, you fail to understand pay structures. The “bonus” is entirely expected. Mortgage lenders here will usually look at a trailing 3-year average. As a rule of thumb, they will lend 5x base salary and 2.5x the amount of “bonus” (or whatever discretionary, non-contractual income) to account for the variability. For people who are commission or fee-based, or business owners, you obviously have to look at a historical average income because there is no contractual salary.

Nobody in businesses like banking or law gets up and goes to work every day for their base salary, nor do they live on it.

Qubert May 22, 2020 10:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by suburbanite (Post 8929281)
Would it be unconstitutional if it was a truly lethal disease that killed something like 20% of healthy individuals? Would people violating stay at home orders be treasonous in such a situation? If so, what's the threshold for a constitutionally-supported lockdown?

I've always found interpretations of the constitution and the parallels with religious study interesting.

This is purely my own honest opinion as an American, so YMMV:

For The Constitution to mean something (anything), it needs to mean something in any and all circumstances. On a human level if this was an airborne version of Ebola or HIV we would probably all walk around in spacesuits, but from a constitutional law prospective it doesn't matter if a virus is 0.009% lethal or 99% lethal, *I* or *you* (if you were American) have inalienable rights that cannot be abridged.

Once a right is "alienable", you can't go back. The government can (and someday will) create or false flag some "emergency" that justifies crossing that rubicon and everything written on that piece of paper back in 1787 becomes as meaningful as the graffiti in the alley in back of my house.

Don't take offense to this next statement, but this sense of legal and cultural absolutism is something many Brits, Canadians, Aussies simply don't "get" due to the progressive evolution of British democratic norms. The UK and it's offspring pretty much have made it up as they have gone along rather than embracing them in one full swoon ala American Revolution. The UK doesn't even *have* a constitution. Ironically, the Europeans who "get" the American mindset the most is....The French, which makes sense if you think about it...

mhays May 23, 2020 3:27 AM

Your rights to movement etc. don't trump other people's rights to life (or liberty or pursuit of happiness).

In fact, the requirement to not kill people tends to take precedence.

Kngkyle May 23, 2020 5:44 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mhays (Post 8930337)
Your rights to movement etc. don't trump other people's rights to life (or liberty or pursuit of happiness).

In fact, the requirement to not kill people tends to take precedence.

Where do you draw the line? The flu kills tens of thousands per year in the US as well. Would a mandatory lockdown every flu season be constitutional in your eyes? This is ultimately for the courts to decide, but to me, a virus with a mortality rate lower than 1% (and significantly lower for people under 60) doesn't justify throwing the constitution out the window. Coronavirus is not an existential threat to the United States.

You can rationalize it all you'd like. Our history is littered with the rationalization of unconstitutional federal and state laws. I just hope this doesn't set a dangerous precedent for expanded government control over individual freedom. We've had enough of that already.

chris08876 May 23, 2020 7:07 AM

After this is all over, when we reflect back on whats going on, we will truely know if it was worth it. I mean in the acute sense, yeah... its sucks. Its not good... not fun... it bloody sucks.

But...but... long-term, we will get a better idea.

Some may see this virus as a bad thing, but what if... what if it was actually a good thing? What if this is the giant walkeup call for the world, in a manner that will usher in change... change that will over the long run save many more lives, order of magnitudes higher, over the long run, than have been taken from us via this virus and its residual non-virus side effects (economic damage, people offing themselves due to "X" reason that can be tied to this virus event).

Possibly, just possibly, the folks that perished are in fact martyrs for the collective well being of folks decades to come, as a result of the global changes that will occur due to this wake up call. I mean, the idea of martyrs, sounds scary, but sometimes, folks in history have had to die to give others life. To give nations another route in the collective well being of its future and present kin.

Now if no positive change occurs, all this would be a waste, and IMO, a failure. If we don't learn from this virus and repeat the same systemic errors in society, than those lives were lost in vain.

Possibly history will judge this virus as a necessary one, to wake up folks to how vulnerable we are, and by remediation of such vulnerabilities, it could be seen as a blessing.

I mean we still have global warming and all... that looming, horrific giant Elephant, but assuming we do very little to curtail it, everyone typing and browsing SSP at this moment will be dead or very old by the time 2080 comes by, so we won't have to worry about it, but folks born today that may live past 2080 or be 50/60 by the time 2080 rolls by, not gonna be fun.

If you want good bed time reading material, look up places that will be to hot to live in the future.

10023 May 23, 2020 7:23 AM

The restrictions are generally pointless at this point. People are gathering in parks, streets are busy, etc. There is an outdoor bar in Hyde Park that was opened, and a police car that rolled past on patrol took like 3 minutes to get past because it was blocked by people. :haha:

You can make businesses close but you can’t keep people from interacting. They’ve been going to visit friends and family this whole time. My neighbors upstairs had a small party earlier this week.

I’ll give you things like concerts or bar service, for a while. But allowing restaurants and gyms, at least, to open with better hygiene standards (but without social distancing that renders them economically unviable), and certainly cultural venues like museums and galleries, to reopen is a no brainier and wouldn’t make an appreciable difference at this point by the looks of things.

the urban politician May 23, 2020 1:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mhays (Post 8930337)
Your rights to movement etc. don't trump other people's rights to life (or liberty or pursuit of happiness).

In fact, the requirement to not kill people tends to take precedence.

If somebody passed a law requiring castration of all HIV infected individuals, then I guess that is also Constitutional using your logic. After all, my right to privacy and to engage in consensual sexual intercourse is superseded by everybody else’s right to be safe from disease.

the urban politician May 23, 2020 1:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 10023 (Post 8930422)
The restrictions are generally pointless at this point. People are gathering in parks, streets are busy, etc. There is an outdoor bar in Hyde Park that was opened, and a police car that rolled past on patrol took like 3 minutes to get past because it was blocked by people. :haha:

You can make businesses close but you can’t keep people from interacting. They’ve been going to visit friends and family this whole time. My neighbors upstairs had a small party earlier this week.

I’ll give you things like concerts or bar service, for a while. But allowing restaurants and gyms, at least, to open with better hygiene standards (but without social distancing that renders them economically unviable), and certainly cultural venues like museums and galleries, to reopen is a no brainier and wouldn’t make an appreciable difference at this point by the looks of things.

I agree. In my neighborhood people have been getting together the whole time.

I think we should drop all of these laws at once and simply recommend strongly that everybody wear a face mask in public until the pandemic is over, as well as use hand sanitizer frequently.

It will achieve all of the same outcomes as these draconian laws that are utterly destroying our society and making life a living hell for millions.

mhays May 23, 2020 5:53 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kngkyle (Post 8930392)
Where do you draw the line? The flu kills tens of thousands per year in the US as well. Would a mandatory lockdown every flu season be constitutional in your eyes? This is ultimately for the courts to decide, but to me, a virus with a mortality rate lower than 1% (and significantly lower for people under 60) doesn't justify throwing the constitution out the window. Coronavirus is not an existential threat to the United States.

You can rationalize it all you'd like. Our history is littered with the rationalization of unconstitutional federal and state laws. I just hope this doesn't set a dangerous precedent for expanded government control over individual freedom. We've had enough of that already.

Flu kills tens of thousands, but not 1,000,000+, as Covid could if we didn't deal with it. The line would be somewhere between the two.

mhays May 23, 2020 5:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by the urban politician (Post 8930474)
If somebody passed a law requiring castration of all HIV infected individuals, then I guess that is also Constitutional using your logic. After all, my right to privacy and to engage in consensual sexual intercourse is superseded by everybody else’s right to be safe from disease.

Talk about a false parallel. HIV infected people are required to abstain...sort of like a quarantine rule.

mhays May 23, 2020 6:03 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 10023 (Post 8930422)
The restrictions are generally pointless at this point. People are gathering in parks, streets are busy, etc. There is an outdoor bar in Hyde Park that was opened, and a police car that rolled past on patrol took like 3 minutes to get past because it was blocked by people. :haha:

You can make businesses close but you can’t keep people from interacting. They’ve been going to visit friends and family this whole time. My neighbors upstairs had a small party earlier this week.

I’ll give you things like concerts or bar service, for a while. But allowing restaurants and gyms, at least, to open with better hygiene standards (but without social distancing that renders them economically unviable), and certainly cultural venues like museums and galleries, to reopen is a no brainier and wouldn’t make an appreciable difference at this point by the looks of things.

You're missing the point of the rules, and how things spread.

For one, rule-breaking is part of why numbers haven't dropped even faster. In the UK, the numbers haven't dropped that much...it's generally #3 in deaths per day despite being a smallish country. Even more than the US it's an example of how NOT to do things.

The good news is that even with rule-breaking, people are getting a small fraction of the exposures they'd get if the world were back to normal. Mixing with smaller, localized groups is nothing like spreading across the city and being in larger groups. Or being in restaurants and eating/socializing in an enclosed space for an hour+ with no mask.

Pedestrian May 23, 2020 7:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mrnyc (Post 8929752)

It won't BE over until there's a vaccine and it'll be largely due to some fairly wealthy, if not billionaire, CEOs of biotech companies to do that. And some of it--not just the research but the production and global distribution of vaccine, may well be done by the Gates Foundation thanks to a certain billionaire. Incidentally, the wealthy execs of remdesivir maker Giead are donating at least the first 150,000 doses of that drug and pershpas more while the vaccine makers are all promising lots of free/at cost doses too.

Pedestrian May 23, 2020 7:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mhays (Post 8930617)
Talk about a false parallel. HIV infected people are required to abstain...sort of like a quarantine rule.

Where are they "required" to do anything? Not in CA. They can probably be sued in civil court if they don't tell partners about their positivity but it's not illegal. Furthermore, it's recognized that since the beginning a lot of people don't know about their status--just as with COVID--so some sort of legal ban probably wouldn't accomplish much.

The North One May 23, 2020 7:15 PM

^ lol there you go falling over yourself to protect the exploiters.

the urban politician May 23, 2020 7:16 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mhays
HIV infected people are required to abstain...sort of like a quarantine rule.

Really? Point me to the US law mandating that HIV infected persons are barred from sexual intercourse.

Meanwhile, people everywhere who own shops engaging in legal trade have been barred from doing business by executive order for the past few months.

Doesn’t sound like a “false parallel” to me whatsoever. After all, quoting your exact words, isn’t this how our lawmakers and judicial system should operate:

Quote:

Originally Posted by mhays
the requirement to not kill people tends to take precedence

Based on your logic, then, HIV infected people should be legally banned from any sexual intercourse.


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