Millions of Americans Plan to Relocate Thanks to Telework, Survey Finds (npr.org) 129
NPR reports:
An astonishing 14 million to 23 million Americans intend to relocate to a different city or region as a result of telework, according to a new study released by Upwork, a freelancing platform. The survey was conducted Oct. 1 to 15 among 20,490 Americans 18 and over.
The large migration is motivated by people no longer confined to the city where their job is located. The pandemic has shifted many companies' view on working from home...
Another study conducted by United Van Lines, a major household moving company, found that people wanted to relocate out of New York state at a higher rate than the national average. And, by the beginning of September, the requests to leave San Francisco had grown to more than double the U.S. average. The survey was conducted between March and August. Nationally, there is a 32% increase in moving interest compared with this time last year, the United Van Lines survey found.
Interestingly, currently San Francisco actually has the lowest positivity rate from coronavirus testing of any major metropolitan area in America — suggesting the migrations aren't motivated by a flight from the pandemic itself.
Instead Upwork's chief economist calls their data "an early indicator of the much larger impacts that remote work could have in increasing economic efficiency and spreading opportunity."
The large migration is motivated by people no longer confined to the city where their job is located. The pandemic has shifted many companies' view on working from home...
Another study conducted by United Van Lines, a major household moving company, found that people wanted to relocate out of New York state at a higher rate than the national average. And, by the beginning of September, the requests to leave San Francisco had grown to more than double the U.S. average. The survey was conducted between March and August. Nationally, there is a 32% increase in moving interest compared with this time last year, the United Van Lines survey found.
Interestingly, currently San Francisco actually has the lowest positivity rate from coronavirus testing of any major metropolitan area in America — suggesting the migrations aren't motivated by a flight from the pandemic itself.
Instead Upwork's chief economist calls their data "an early indicator of the much larger impacts that remote work could have in increasing economic efficiency and spreading opportunity."
Who wouldn't want to leave San Francisco? (Score:4, Insightful)
Highest rents and house prices in the country.
Drug addicts stealing everything and shitting in the streets.
Politicians doing everything they can to encourage both.
Re:Who wouldn't want to leave San Francisco? (Score:4, Informative)
Politicians doing everything they can to encourage both.
Just wait until big tech leaves, and their money stream dries up.
Once they're done taxing everyone that works for their money, they'll have to tax the only ones left: homeless and drug addicts.
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Also known as "the Baltimore model".
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Nope! Once Biden is elected, the Feds will just print money and hand over to Democrat controlled failing cities. Gotta prop up that voter base. Everyone else is a fiscal casualty. It's war, and they're coming for your wealth. Say hello to inflation and higher tax rates!
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Democrats: Let the government take all your money.
Republicans: Let big business take all your money.
Where is the "let's let you keep your money" party? (Hint: it doesn't exist.)
You're deluding yourself thinking you're better off under the thumb of one party or the other. Either way, you're still under someone's thumb.
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We can see a similar thing to tech in general: before people became programmers because they liked programming. Now the field is polluted with people who are only programmers because they want the money. They have no joy in it.
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What? Programmers don't need money too? Color me shocked.
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I think SF was basically a better place before it was taken over by tech, because people lived in SF because they liked the area, not because they wanted to make money.
Agreed.
We can see a similar thing to tech in general: before people became programmers because they liked programming. Now the field is polluted with people who are only programmers because they want the money. They have no joy in it.
Again, agreed.
The first question in a SWE interview should be "how old was you when you wrote your first line of code?"
I was 12. A small game in MSX Basic. No internet back then, so I had to go to the library to get books on programming. Kudos to those who correctly guess my age.
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I wrote a game on the Apple ][ (they had several at my high school) called "Subterranean Odyssey", when I was 16 or 17. Before that, I used to hang out at Radio Shack and write little BASIC programs on the TRS-80s.
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No (Score:1, Insightful)
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I think $3500 a month to rent a closet is the actual reason.
Re:No (Score:4, Funny)
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Most red states can't afford to exist without subsidies from blue states. [politifact.com]
And sprawling, white middle-class neighborhoods depend on subsidies from dense inner-city neighborhoods [strongtowns.org] and rich upper-class neighborhoods.
So you can call Democrat-run areas "hellscapes," but I like to call them "gold mines" because without them, the country would quickly go bankrupt.
Re:No (Score:4, Interesting)
It's difficult to argue that one way or another given all the agendas involved. It will be an interesting experiment to see rich CEOs having less power to drag employees into their headquarters cities. And if this middle management layer is no longer available to subsidize those cities, will they give the rich executives the same tax breaks for locating there? If not, will the CEOs even stay put?
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Most red states can't afford to exist without subsidies from blue states.
white middle-class neighborhoods depend on subsidies from dense inner-city neighborhoods
Y'all keep taxing yourselves and keep those yummy subsidies headed our way. Ya' hear?
Re:No (Score:4, Interesting)
Your first linked chart doesn't show subsidies to states. It claims to, but really mostly shows payments to individuals within states. So that includes things like military pensions, social security retirement, tax credits, and means-tested programs. The states themselves aren't the ones receiving the money. The fact that people prefer to retire to blue states doesn't mean red states are subsidizing them.
The other large differences are driven by cost-of-living and means testing. In the one-size-fits-all federal scheme, income taxation and welfare benefits are based on income. So in higher cost of living/corresponding higher income states, that works against individuals. It's inherent in the policy design preferred by progressives.
But sure, those of us in blue states are fine with the red states joining them in voting to eliminate federal government reallocations of the wealth. Wonder why the red states aren't willing, though....
Your second link is talking about the amounts of taxes collected from older neighborhoods vs. newer more "upscale" neighborhoods. They're the same cities in this case, so you're not comparing them to Republican run places. All that shows is that the Democrats running those cities suck at planning/improving them, because the "newer" portions they've planned out cost more and provide less in taxes. From the "strong cities" perspective (your link), that's because of the insane zoning regulations in place for the newer developments, not coincidentally similar to some of the ones which are causing lots of people to relocate out of places like SF when they're now able to.
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Evidence or GTFO.
Yes, the "gold mine" cities subsidize other cities in the same county and state, and so it's not surprising that people are choosing to relocate where the cost of living is lower, not that they really want to but because the sub
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Sure. Provide the link to the statistics which back up the chart and it'll show where they show payments to individuals within states. I've read the details in the past in response to similar information. The link in this chart itself doesn't contain any of the statistics, so there is no current basis for them at all. Taking them as accurate, it's the only reasonable explanation. But I'm happy to show that in detail for this particular source if anyone wants to provide that source to look at.
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Yes it does but the page behind the link has been taken offline. Do you need help using the Wayback Machine?
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The list of numbers is "Federal Spending in Each State Per Dollar of Federal Taxes" cited to the Census Bureau. Statistics from the report for 2005 [census.gov]:
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Ok so by my math, $703 billion is 20.7% of the sum of $2.3 trillion and $1.1 trillion. Being well under 50% of total expenditures, that means it doesn't "mostly [show] payments to individuals within states" as you claimed.
But I agree that payments to individuals should be removed from the figures.
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The other categories also include payments to individuals. That was just the example description of the first listed category. Did you read the PDF to see the complete category descriptions?
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Perhaps you don't remember what New York City was like before Giuliani, when decades of mismanagement by incomeptent Democrats turned it into the "Rotten Apple". It only took a couple of years for a Republican mayor to fix it, making it clean, safe
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Actually it was the policies of Giuliani's predecessors Koch and Dinkins that got the ball rolling. Giuliani deserves credit for not stopping the momentum, just as Trump initially deserved credit for not ruining the booming economy he inherited from Obama.
Paradox (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the most interesting paradox in this exodus is the fact that many of the people who take great care to escape the urban areas then proceed to proudly and aggressively vote for politicians to pursue the same policies that turned their previous homes unlivable.
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Can you elaborate on these policies that made the previous homes unlivable? I don't think the local governments mandated sky high rent.
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The rents are high because the demand is high. There is a temporary drop in demand but it will vanish quickly as th
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Can you elaborate on these policies that made the previous homes unlivable? I don't think the local governments mandated sky high rent.
They pass form based building codes that demand the most expensive materials. [bufgreencode.com] They remove entire lanes of traffic so the tiny percentage of the population that cycles can have their safe space. [buffalorising.com] They remove highways to punish drivers and try to force people to take crappy public transportation [wikipedia.org].
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Here you go. A man tried to build affordable housing and the government stopped him at every turn. [reason.com] Then he was called a racist for his trouble. Because of course that would happen in San Francisco.
The "government" didn't stop him - other competing special-interest groups did.
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I think the most interesting paradox in this exodus is the fact that many of the people who take great care to escape the urban areas then proceed to proudly and aggressively vote for politicians to pursue the same policies that turned their previous homes unlivable.
Interesting adjectives to describe voters. How does one vote "aggressively"? Do you imply that you vote with shame and timidity?
There are some aspects of many tech areas that may be characterized as "unlivable." The key aspect is the high cost of living. However, that cost of living is offset by a higher income. In fact, that higher income often more than offsets the higher cost of living. The one big exception is in buying a house. The housing market is out of whack in much of the US, but especially
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I think the most interesting paradox in this exodus is the fact that many of the people who take great care to escape the urban areas then proceed to proudly and aggressively vote for politicians to pursue the same policies that turned their previous homes unlivable.
Which policies are you thinking of?
The data from the study was very clear: people are moving to places with lower housing costs.
I think that housing costs are largely a product of free market supply and demand. The only policies that affect housing costs are zoning regulations. Zoning regulations are entirely a local city council thing, not a statewide thing, not a democract-vs-republican thing, not a "health provision for all" thing, not a "more government regulation" thing.
Do you have reason to believe th
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The EPA [wikipedia.org] is "a local city council thing"?
It kind of looks that way [reason.com], though.
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Which fools upvoted this troll?
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Which fools upvoted this troll?
Residents of CHAZ.
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Re:Wonâ(TM)t last (Score:4, Insightful)
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That very much depends on their home situation and setup. Up until recently, I was trying to work from a basement bedroom, while I'd hear my son and wife fight over school stuff. My productivity was crap, I would get distracted anytime I went up stairs to get a drink or snack... I've since moved the family to a place where schools are open, and setup my desk in the garage which I can seal off during the day and not have to worry about being bothered by the family. Things are much better now, I have a work w
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For what do you *need* to reach them? How about letting them get on with their work?
Chasing people and expecting an immediate response is what makes offices unproductive. Whenever i've worked in an office environment, the constant distractions made it difficult to get any work done.
At home i'm able to concentrate on my projects. Once done, i can then respond to any messages that were sent to me.
Also people who are working remotely tend to be more flexible. Again when i worked in an office once the time was
Judge for yourself - at your job (Score:5, Insightful)
In my case, we always allowed remote work and it was common for people to work from home, so we had the productivity benefits of being able to WFH if you have a doctor or dentist appt. Most tech companies had this since the 90s. I can see how companies where WFH was forbidden or discouraged would get a boost, but for companies with a better culture, I would guess most suffer.
Certainly the introverted and autistic thrive away from people,(both labels describe me) but most don't. Business software requires more than technical skills. As a software engineer, I am GREAT at technology. I've been at it a long time. Give me detailed requirements and I'll crank out Java and DB code faster than anyone I know at higher quality and greater test coverage....but 90% of my job is not coding. I know HOW do to my job very well, but most don't know WHAT my job is, including those paying me. 90% of the time, I am gathering requirements and determining edge cases and extracting details missing from the guidelines given. 90% of my job is human communication and more specifically, extracting info that other humans didn't think to write down or think about. So, being out of the office has tangibly impacted my productivity, because the fuckers that didn't write down what I needed to know are generally busy.
In the office, I can camp out in their cube when they ignore my e-mails and slack messages. I can make it very inconvenient to ignore me. I cannot do that remotely. Sure, they SHOULD respond to their e-mails, but does anyone in your company really do that? How many respond in a timely manner? No one in my office above my level does. When my boss shares his screen, I see his outlook indicate 6000 unread e-mails in his inbox. When I try to schedule meetings, his calendar is booked 90% of the day. So yeah, extracting useful information from important people has gotten a lot tougher, post-COVID. I am grateful to have a job, but COVID has made mine tougher and less productive.
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What you are describing is a culture problem at your company, not something caused by working remotely. Further, you opened your diatribe describing a unique situation brought on by a pandemic. These people you talk down about are the same people who are becoming covid-19 positive, or maybe a family member. They are the ones dealing with their children now that childcare as been exported to the parents. They do not have the ergonomical setup that you have and cannot sit on a kitchen chair all day. Okay
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You're in the middle of the pandemic and your burndown charts are slightly down?
This is really not WFH situation. So many people have to do extra things on top of the WFH.
If anything things going relatively well only shows the power of WFH.
botcode: violence (???)
Re:Wonâ(TM)t last (Score:4, Interesting)
Yep. Though it varies. Typical office workers are anything from 10-20% more productive at home depending what studies you look at. But a few exceptions exist, and that's largely dependent on the problem solving culture in a workplace. Places which rely on procedures and strict meetings typically get more productive. Places which rely on teams being co-located or critical information to be shared at the watercooler will not.
Re: Wonâ(TM)t last (Score:2)
So places where the mode of work is weighed down by useless middle management become more productive when said management has less ability to rip people away from their work. Quelle Suprise.
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I said nothing about middle management. And I've seen nothing in studies or read anything about middle management having an effect.
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No all people are more productive at home. I've noticed that people with children at home (age 0-13) are overly involved with non-work activities during the day. They catch up with work in the late evening. They are stretching work out from 8 am to 11 pm just to stay on pace with a normal workday. I don't know how they can keep that up for the long term.
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Those people are more productive at home too. It's just that they're replacing a daycare/nanny/whatever with their own labour so their daytime productivity is no longer exclusively provided to the company.
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Children that wouldn't be home if the parents weren't home. Work from home during a pandemic is not exactly the same as work from home.
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Plenty of ppl ARE productive at home, while others are not. Some jobs simply require interacting with others constantly.
Re:Wonâ(TM)t last (Score:4, Interesting)
After a few months of frustrations, pushing projects forward became easy, no body was ever left hanging on something for next weeks approval all summer long.
Take away every reason to live in the city (Score:5, Interesting)
In happier times, my wife and I looked for a place in the burbs. It was DEPRESSING...everyone we saw was depressed, older, miserable. We felt like it aged us 10 years just spending a day there looking at houses. Felt much better going back to our college neighborhood. We weren't going to commute 2h a day just to be depressed with a larger yard (was an anomaly, but found a city place with the same square footage and same price).
I love my 10 minute commute and great options and scenery. Now I am just trapped in a nice place with a micro-yard and banned from half the places I want to go. In a year or so, things will go back to normal, but until then, I am not loving my urban place to live....other than I'm around highly intelligent people and the fuckers wear masks. (it's always shocking to me how the further I drive from the city, the less the assholes comply with the law).
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Oh dear GOD, I'm living this. Basically living in Agrestic, and holy fuck are these people miserable assholes. I guess scraping up that 8k house payment every month is stressful. Luckily I rented, and can leave soon.
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(it's always shocking to me how the further I drive from the city, the less the assholes comply with the law).
The funny part about this, is these are the same ppl that scream about illegals breaking the laws (and they are) and want to export all of them, regardless of family status, yet, wanted Mueller report to be stopped/obstructed and do not care about Russian interference.
Problem is, that BOTH far left/far right extremists are saying do what I tell you, have only my opinion, but support the constitution.
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"I love my 10 minute commute and great options and scenery. Now I am just trapped in a nice place with a micro-yard and banned from half the places I want to go."
Do you think they will lower your rent to make it competitive?
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And it's interesting that you say people looked depressed in the suburbs. As a rule, living in a city is associated with higher levels of depression and anxiety.
City vs burbs - correlation or causation? (Score:2)
If you recall, masks are for when you can't maintain safe "social distance". That's far easier to do the further you get from a city.
And it's interesting that you say people looked depressed in the suburbs. As a rule, living in a city is associated with higher levels of depression and anxiety.
In my state, you must wear a mask, by law. We're not relying on their medical assessment of safe distance, but how they respect the law and the basic consideration for their neighbors. We're talking suburbs, pretty big towns, not rural outposts. Their roads, parks, and businesses are as busy as my urban ones. They just have bigger parking lots and yards. Normally I am pretty libertarian on most things, but masks are a must. It's just shitty to kill my parents because you feel entitled to break the law
Thank the Chinese (Score:1, Flamebait)
I bet all these people are thanking the Chinese for sending the virus over.
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I'd bet a lot of them are thanking the president for not taking it seriously.
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The far right had high counts because they refused (and continue to do so) to wear mask or even think about protecting others. OTOH, the far left were idiots for allowing Political Correctness to control them and their telling citizens to support Chinese businesses in which the Chinese just came back from Vacation in China, or were insisting that Old folks homes MUST take back patient that survived covid (while disreg
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Just remember folks (Score:2)
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And if you leave Texas... just remember to thank God every day that you don't live in that backwards hell-hole anymore.
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Don't bring the covid with you
Covid is surging in Republican-run states. People from New York and San Francisco are not bringing it with them, they're catching once they arrive.
and don't bring along any mind viruses either please.
Such as believing in an all-knowing, all-seeing being who watches you 24 hours a day to see if you've done anything wrong?
Re:Just remember folks (Score:5, Funny)
Such as believing in an all-knowing, all-seeing being who watches you 24 hours a day to see if you've done anything wrong?
Come on now, there's no harm in believing in Santa!
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Don't bring the covid with you
Covid is surging in Republican-run states. People from New York and San Francisco are not bringing it with them, they're catching once they arrive.
and don't bring along any mind viruses either please.
Such as believing in an all-knowing, all-seeing being who watches you 24 hours a day to see if you've done anything wrong?
I live in LA. Cases are "spiking". Unless something has changed recently, LA is run by a Democratic Mayor and California is run by a Democratic Governor. We're not better off, COVID-wise, than anyone else in the country.
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Europe is apparently strongly republican now as well: https://www.bbc.com/news/world... [bbc.com]
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mind viruses
It's almost like learning is contagious and makes you think different thoughts. Just merely being exposed to better information changes you. Just like a virus. Can't argue with that.
...and this is why... (Score:2)
Urban ways are why one ESCAPES cities. Leave that infection behind or stay urban.
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Leave the Blue Blues behind!
This is generally a good thing (Score:4, Interesting)
Really? (Score:3)
When you've got human shit on the sidewalks you don't really need another reason.
Solutions (Score:1)
When they move, better plan on out of the west (Score:2)
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Conservative exodus (Score:3)
Gee, we can stay here with the riots and crazy ideologies, or we can head for low tax, low craziness places. Hmm ... what to do.
Well, that and those folks fleeing the problems that they don't realize their crazy ideologies created. Sadly, that group brings the problem with them.
Re: Conservative exodus (Score:2)
Low craziness, like Forks, WA
https://www.wired.com/story/an... [wired.com]
Re: Conservative exodus (Score:2)
Low craziness, like Kyle, TX
https://www.kxan.com/news/texa... [kxan.com]
Re: Conservative exodus (Score:2)
Sorry one more to help with your house hunting and CA emigration, Brunswick, GA might have some affordable homes.
https://nypost.com/2020/07/29/... [nypost.com]
unlike states are a boon not a detriment (Score:2)
One of the upsides to being in America is the fact that you have states that have very different means of governance and a choice to move to one if you want to or the other (no papers, no hoops, you just move).
If you want more government you go to California or NC, if you want less you go to Texas or Alaska. Its not all bad having choices...just don't turn the place you moved to into the same place you where ejecting yourself from...
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HI from New York (Score:1)
Covid Effect (Score:1)
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Guess you haven't read the news lately about those utopian republican states https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/0... [cnbc.com]
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Ah yes, the bastion of non-partisan "news" stories, CNBC.
Meanwhile, back in reality [worldometers.info], the Deaths/1M population numbers (you know, the ones that matter, not "cases"), stubbornly refuse to indicate anything except the worse run places in regards to COVID, the ones you're most likely to die if you lived through this pandemic there, are all run by Democratic governors.
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Re: The big cities are dead, or dying (Score:2)
99.9% of the population at any given time are not sick enough to need a hospital and so it makes no difference to them how the hospitals are doing so no, there wouldn't be any panic.