Economic Conditions - Nashville, TN, U.S., Global

[titanhog]

Yeah...a little bit of kitsch is ok...but once you allow tractors, hot tubs, pedal taverns, etc...it becomes like a Disney World of Weird. 

[Nash_12South]

One chance I see to rid downtown of these slow moving "transpotainment" is for folks, like those eventually moving into the Alliance Bernstein building to start gripping about the hour it takes to vacate the building in normal weekday traffic due to these slow moving things. Office buildings located within 2 blocks of Broadway are impacted significantly more by the tourists than those a couple of blocks further away. At least that's what I've seen. Were it not for a daily traffic cop, folks in the Pinnacle Bldg. would never get home most nights. I think cities like Las Vegas and New Orleans also view their money generating tourist areas with a certain disdain. We are not unique in that.

I think there is a certain wisdom in building office bldgs at the edges of the CBD like Amazon is doing. You get to partake in downtown without being "trapped" at the end of the day. 

[donNdonelson2]

A business acquaintance of mine was SO happy when his firm moved from new construction near the tourist district out to the Gulch. Big time saver in daily traffic!

[Nashvillain]

1 hour ago, Nash_12South said:

One chance I see to rid downtown of these slow moving "transpotainment" is for folks, like those eventually moving into the Alliance Bernstein building to start gripping about the hour it takes to vacate the building in normal weekday traffic due to these slow moving things. Office buildings located within 2 blocks of Broadway are impacted significantly more by the tourists than those a couple of blocks further away. At least that's what I've seen. Were it not for a daily traffic cop, folks in the Pinnacle Bldg. would never get home most nights. I think cities like Las Vegas and New Orleans also view their money generating tourist areas with a certain disdain. We are not unique in that.

I think there is a certain wisdom in building office bldgs at the edges of the CBD like Amazon is doing. You get to partake in downtown without being "trapped" at the end of the day. 

Alternatively, not having to drive downtown would prevent employees from getting trapped. As much as I think the transpotainment vehicles are cheesy, noisy, and annoying, I'll take them over thousands of fast moving cars and trucks any day.

Edited July 31, 2020 by Nashvillain

[UTgrad09]

The people who ride in wagons pulled by tractors deserve to be waterboarded.

[donNdonelson2]

3 hours ago, UTgrad09 said:

The people who ride in wagons pulled by tractors deserve to be waterboarded.

As long as you’re also pouring Jack Daniel’s Old # 7, I’m sure they pay crazy money for the experience! Anything to put a little more “wooo” into the wooo-hoo girls. 

[markhollin]

Nashville's economic fate is still murky.  But there are signs that recovery is starting.

- New building permits issued during the COVID-19 crisis also took a dive. They are down almost 26% from 5,613 in 2019. 

- This year, the 13-county Nashville Metropolitan Statistical Area will lose 113,000 jobs, according to a Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce analysis. "That represents about 9.6% unemployment (of the current labor force) in 2020, so it's severe," said Rupa DeLoach, the chamber's vice president of research.

- DeLoach believes the Greater Nashville economy will return to pre-coronavirus levels in the third quarter of next year for most industries if reopening isn't delayed any more. But the leisure and hospitality sectors won't recover until the second half of 2022, she said. 

- Since April, Nashville has recovered 32,100 leisure and hospitality jobs, or 54% of those lost from February to April, according to a MoneyGeek.com analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

More at The Tennessean here:

https://www.tennessean.com/story/money/2020/08/03/nashville-economic-fate-still-murky-but-signs-recovery-emerge/5499134002/

[smeagolsfree]

"- DeLoach believes the Greater Nashville economy will return to pre-coronavirus levels in the third quarter of next year for most industries if reopening isn't delayed any more. But the leisure and hospitality sectors won't recover until the second half of 2022, she said."

That is the key statement, but it will be delayed further and I think the recovery will be a lot longer coming than this brighter look out. Even when there is a vaccine available, the consensus is that at best it may only be 50% effective and there may be booster shots that need to be given, plus the fact there will be a lot of people that simply will not get the shot perpetuating this outbreak even longer. I do not look for international travelers to come back to this country until we have this under control, thus hurting tourism more, but US travelers will be stuck here.

You have to remember a vaccine will not fix the economy and that there are 30 million out of work and millions are in danger of losing their homes and being forced out onto the streets. The effects of this are going to be long lasting and to think that everything is going to get back to normal in such of time is just WISHFUL thinking!

[DDIG]

Only 80 cases out of 22,000 are tied to bars and restaurants in Nashville. Yet 900% of the coverage points the finger at it:

https://tennesseelookout.com/2020/08/04/nashville-restaurants-and-bars-account-for-few-confirmed-covid-19-cases/

[DDIG]

8 minutes ago, DDIG said:

Only 80 cases out of 22,000 are tied to bars and restaurants in Nashville. Yet 900% of the coverage points the finger at it:

https://tennesseelookout.com/2020/08/04/nashville-restaurants-and-bars-account-for-few-confirmed-covid-19-cases/

And chaser: https://wpln.org/post/investigation-nashville-health-officials-have-struggled-to-address-covid-clusters-in-immigrant-communities/

As people obsess over bars they do nothing for the immigrant communities that need the most help.

[Nash_12South]

56 minutes ago, DDIG said:

Only 80 cases out of 22,000 are tied to bars and restaurants in Nashville. Yet 900% of the coverage points the finger at it:

https://tennesseelookout.com/2020/08/04/nashville-restaurants-and-bars-account-for-few-confirmed-covid-19-cases/

This may not be the place to follow up on this, but I think if our numbers stay acceptable, the city will feel pressure to open the bars to 50% and restaurants back to 75% to try to salvage some of the end of summer/Labor Day tourist business. With schools reopening, to varying degrees, the numbers will be down. That would likely be on August 16th when the current order expires. The city will have to bite the bullet at some point or just allow the bars to fail.

Edited August 4, 2020 by Nash_12South

[smeagolsfree]

It is interesting to note that since the bars were shut down and the mask mandate was imposed the number of cases in Nashville has dropped dramatically. So there has to be a correlation with the idiots on Broadway and not doing what they were supposed to be doing  and the number of cases dropping. 

The other issue is that contact tracing was not working. There were just not enough people to do the contact tracing. Who knows how many out of towners got the virus and spread it back to where ever they came from. Yes there are high numbers in the SE Davidson County area but there were also high numbers in the downtown area. Those  were the two hotspots.

Nashville numbers will continue to go down I think while much of the rest of the state will climb, especially when the school get back in session. "Its a mistake" Hope I am wrong!

 

 

[DDIG]

16 hours ago, smeagolsfree said:

It is interesting to note that since the bars were shut down and the mask mandate was imposed the number of cases in Nashville has dropped dramatically. So there has to be a correlation with the idiots on Broadway and not doing what they were supposed to be doing  and the number of cases dropping. 

The other issue is that contact tracing was not working. There were just not enough people to do the contact tracing. Who knows how many out of towners got the virus and spread it back to where ever they came from. Yes there are high numbers in the SE Davidson County area but there were also high numbers in the downtown area. Those  were the two hotspots.

Nashville numbers will continue to go down I think while much of the rest of the state will climb, especially when the school get back in session. "Its a mistake" Hope I am wrong!

 

 

Correlation remains unclear on a lot of fronts. Cities with different lock down measures have often gotten the same trajectory in many cases. California / LA had some of the strictest regulations in the country and that didn't stop areas there from becoming hot spots. The last batch of hotspots (Houston, AZ, LA, etc.) have tapered down now.

There was an understanding at the beginning that this was a bad / naturally occurring virus that unfortunately came with mortality. Our stated goal was not to overwhelm hospital systems. Other than a hand full of hotspots, most systems stayed in check. Remember 15 days to slow the spread? That's turned into six months, and the collective conscious has shifted from avoid overrunning hospitals to no cases and societal activity is morally unacceptable until there are zero cases. 

What we've done is completely thrown out a devastating multi-year economic, mental and physical health outside of covid, and education loss the lockdown will cause for an obsession over COVID case counts. 

Also, I guess I'm more realistic about my fellow man. Humanity is flawed and that should be factored in. You try to keep people in their homes for six months and you're naturally gonna get things like the house party we saw this weekend. Yes, it is selfish, but to assume its not going to happen is naive. Policies should reflect that reality - you're gonna have to focus on finding safer ways for people to have an outlet to live the way they want.

Edited August 5, 2020 by DDIG

[SoundScan]

We could reduce the number of deaths for all types of communicable diseases if we just sheltered in place constantly, but obviously compromise is required in order for humanity to sustain itself. COVID-19 is but one of many--just newer and less understood, though thankfully that is changing. Around 60 million people die across the world every year. I'm sure we could save or extend millions of those lives with extreme measures, but it would make it impossible to actually live.

[ruraljuror]

14 hours ago, DDIG said:

Correlation remains unclear on a lot of fronts. Cities with different lock down measures have often gotten the same trajectory in many cases. California / LA had some of the strictest regulations in the country and that didn't stop areas there from becoming hot spots. The last batch of hotspots (Houston, AZ, LA, etc.) have tapered down now.

There was an understanding at the beginning that this was a bad / naturally occurring virus that unfortunately came with mortality. Our stated goal was not to overwhelm hospital systems. Other than a hand full of hotspots, most systems stayed in check. Remember 15 days to slow the spread? That's turned into six months, and the collective conscious has shifted from avoid overrunning hospitals to no cases and societal activity is morally unacceptable until there are zero cases. 

What we've done is completely thrown out a devastating multi-year economic, mental and physical health outside of covid, and education loss the lockdown will cause for an obsession over COVID case counts. 

Also, I guess I'm more realistic about my fellow man. Humanity is flawed and that should be factored in. You try to keep people in their homes for six months and you're naturally gonna get things like the house party we saw this weekend. Yes, it is selfish, but to assume its not going to happen is naive. Policies should reflect that reality - you're gonna have to focus on finding safer ways for people to have an outlet to live the way they want.

I'm genuinely curious what you're advocating for here.  What would you like us to be doing differently?

Do you want to reopen everything? Because it seems to me that plenty of places have tried that already (and keep trying it), and it's usually only a matter of weeks before cases flare up and they do a 180.  You casually mention that the last batch of hotspots have tampered down now, but you completely ignore that they all implemented a bunch of new restrictions once they became a hotspot, not to mention the fact that being located in a place that attains hotspot status creates a revived fear in people that causes their behavior to change in favor of safety and isolation.  These phenomena are not unrelated.

And I think you'll agree that the 'case count obsession' is a little superficially dismissive of the situation here.  I'm sure you've read that we've lost more Americans to Covid than we lost in any single war besides WWII and the Civil War, and those lives were lost over periods of several years, not several months.  To be clear,  I'm not framing the Covid death count this way in order to wrap my argument in the flag and grandstand - death is death and doesn't care if it's glorified or not - but I do think the war analogy provides good context to the scope of the tragedy we're facing and the death toll certainly deserves to be acknowledged instead of focusing your attention exclusively on the case count if you're going to be advocating for returning to business as usual.

Further, it seems like you're glossing over the fact that all of these Covid cases (and the unmentioned resulting deaths) have happened while a significant portion of the population have been practicing unprecedented levels of mask wearing, hand washing, social distancing, and sheltering in place. You're right that one of our primary goals has been to avoid overwhelming the hospitals, but what do you think will happen if everyone stops doing all of the mask wearing, hand washing, social distancing, and sheltering in place all at once? 

Humanity is definitely flawed, and I agree that government policies should reflect that reality, but plenty of countries (in fact, almost all of them) have done better than we Americans have in our Covid response.  Why do you think we're doing worse than most places? I don't mean that question or any of the other questions in this post rhetorically, I'm sincerely hoping you can give me some insight into your thought process here, because I read your posts but I still have no idea about what you'd like to see happen next.

 

Edited August 6, 2020 by ruraljuror

[smeagolsfree]

23 hours ago, DDIG said:

Correlation remains unclear on a lot of fronts. Cities with different lock down measures have often gotten the same trajectory in many cases. California / LA had some of the strictest regulations in the country and that didn't stop areas there from becoming hot spots. The last batch of hotspots (Houston, AZ, LA, etc.) have tapered down now.

There was an understanding at the beginning that this was a bad / naturally occurring virus that unfortunately came with mortality. Our stated goal was not to overwhelm hospital systems. Other than a hand full of hotspots, most systems stayed in check. Remember 15 days to slow the spread? That's turned into six months, and the collective conscious has shifted from avoid overrunning hospitals to no cases and societal activity is morally unacceptable until there are zero cases. 

What we've done is completely thrown out a devastating multi-year economic, mental and physical health outside of covid, and education loss the lockdown will cause for an obsession over COVID case counts. 

Also, I guess I'm more realistic about my fellow man. Humanity is flawed and that should be factored in. You try to keep people in their homes for six months and you're naturally gonna get things like the house party we saw this weekend. Yes, it is selfish, but to assume its not going to happen is naive. Policies should reflect that reality - you're gonna have to focus on finding safer ways for people to have an outlet to live the way they want.

My thoughts on this are that it could have all been handled differently from the beginning, from make wearing which should have been in  place from the start. But they sent the wrong message saying that mask were not needed and didnt help not following the CDC's own advice and experience  and learning from the last bad pandemic, the Spanish Flu. Yes the administration called for a ban from China, after the crap was already here, again too little too late and did nothing to stop the cases flooding in from the US citizens coming in from Europe. This could have been handled in about a month with a lock down of international travel that should have still been in place, a 1 month nationwide lock down.  We should have quarantined every person that came into the US for 3 weeks. Then we could have moved on, but it was prolonged because of incompetent leadership.

I happen to know of people that came in from Europe and were not tested, quarantined, did not have their temperature checked or anything. I also know of people that were sick in early January. so this crap was already here and spreading. The real problem is that the blame lays on both sides of the political isle for politicizing a disease and these boneheads will not learn from it. It was made worse by the president making false claims and the right screaming personal freedom which the courts have in the past said it is not. The safety of the community trumps personnel freedom in a situation like this and there are a lot of court cases that support it. 

To ask the citizens of this country to come together and do the same thing and have faith in them to do it is just not going to happen. Its sort of like heading cats. Its just not going to happen. I have heard this said time and time again....IT didnt have to be this way...but here we are. We have stupid leaders (both sides) and stupid people (both sides). Too many people in this country take the constitution to extremes and that is just as dangerous as doing away with said rights. I do not think the founding fathers ever intended a lot constitution to be interpreted the way it has been. 

[Nash_12South]

There are folks who view COVID as a 90-100% health issue. If we do that, then the health smart thing to do, is to shut down everything until we have a vaccine, it has been thoroughly tested, and everyone has taken it. That means closing all retail, schools, colleges, travel, sports etc. That is 6-12 months away, optimistically. When folks say the economy cannot survive that, why then you want grandma to die. There is no optimal way to keep people from catching the virus and trying to keep people working, in their homes, and businesses from failing. We have to create some balance of keeping cases in manageable numbers and keeping people working. My neighborhood restaurants were all as packed, even at 50%, as is possible, last night. A lot of people want to and are going to go out. That doesn't mean they want grandma to die. We are learning to navigate in a world of masks and keeping our city open. For health reasons I have been venturing to Cool Springs twice weekly since early June. Since I'm stir crazy, I've ventured into stores following almost every visit and have seen mask wearing go from 50/50 to near 95% in the last 8 weeks. We are adapting, helped in large part by the Publix's/Kroger's/Walmarts finally enforcing wearing masks. The state is finally airing a good commercial on wearing masks. We cannot keep bars totally closed indefinitely and expect them to be here in a year. The same can be said for most of our small, non chain, restaurants. Going forward is going to be frustrating, angering and awfully messy. 

One thing I witnessed is that folks who'd normally be dining out with friends, being served by folks in masks and departing after an hour are instead having their friends over to their homes to share pot luck and sit around for a few hours catching up. This is not going to change as people grow stir crazy and is one reason I see the possible expansion of dining/bars capacity as not entirely bad. 

Update - Apparently the first person was arrested for not wearing a mask, last night. 

Edited August 6, 2020 by Nash_12South

[ruraljuror]

2 hours ago, Nash_12South said:

There are folks who view COVID as a 90-100% health issue. If we do that, then the health smart thing to do, is to shut down everything until we have a vaccine, it has been thoroughly tested, and everyone has taken it. That means closing all retail, schools, colleges, travel, sports etc. That is 6-12 months away, optimistically. When folks say the economy cannot survive that, why then you want grandma to die. There is no optimal way to keep people from catching the virus and trying to keep people working, in their homes, and businesses from failing. We have to create some balance of keeping cases in manageable numbers and keeping people working. My neighborhood restaurants were all as packed, even at 50%, as is possible, last night. A lot of people want to and are going to go out. That doesn't mean they want grandma to die. We are learning to navigate in a world of masks and keeping our city open. For health reasons I have been venturing to Cool Springs twice weekly since early June. Since I'm stir crazy, I've ventured into stores following almost every visit and have seen mask wearing go from 50/50 to near 95% in the last 8 weeks. We are adapting, helped in large part by the Publix's/Kroger's/Walmarts finally enforcing wearing masks. The state is finally airing a good commercial on wearing masks. We cannot keep bars totally closed indefinitely and expect them to be here in a year. The same can be said for most of our small, non chain, restaurants. Going forward is going to be frustrating, angering and awfully messy. 

One thing I witnessed is that folks who'd normally be dining out with friends, being served by folks in masks and departing after an hour are instead having their friends over to their homes to share pot luck and sit around for a few hours catching up. This is not going to change as people grow stir crazy and is one reason I see the possible expansion of dining/bars capacity as not entirely bad. 

 

I agree that we need to find a balance, and I think that's exactly what we've been doing, right? That's why we have several 'tiers' on the open/shutdown spectrum to enable us to be as open as possible when possible, but also so that we're prepared to move two steps forward and one or two steps back when flare ups inevitably happen. 

Unless I misunderstand, it seems to me that the primary complaint in your post is that you think that greater than 50% capacity at restaurants should be allowed - is that right? That seems kind of like a minor quibble to me, but I'll address it nonetheless.

Setting aside the fact that allowing greater restaurant capacity will make it more difficult to socially distance which in turn will make it more likely that we're heading toward the 'one step' back side of the spectrum instead of the 'two steps forward' end, I see a couple issues with allowing greater restaurant capacity:

First, just because you allow more than 50% occupancy doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to suddenly have endless customers beating down the door trying to get a seat. The restaurants may be packed in 12 South at 50% capacity, but I guarantee that is not equally the case with all restaurants all over the city. Even if all restaurants were suddenly allowed to have 100% capacity again, there is a large portion of the population that is going to remain reluctant to dine out and there's nothing we can do from a policy standpoint in the short term that's going to bring demand back to the level that it was pre-pandemic. 

Second, because we can't artificially get demand back to it's pre-pandemic levels, allowing for 100% capacity would very possibly have the effect of further hurting many of the small restaurants who are struggling to survive, and we could end up with more closures as a result. It's somewhat counterintuitive, but the fact that capacity is limited at any given restaurant means that the limited demand has to be more spread around to other establishments and to take out options, which in turn may give more establishments a chance to weather this storm.  Some people will stay home instead and do potluck dinners of course, as you noted, but from a public health standpoint I do believe small private gatherings that last hours would be preferable to shorter restaurant outings where there's more interaction with strangers and more people in a small space over the course of the entire dinner service.

Regardless of the restaurant capacity issue, however, it seems like what you're advocating is a 'yo yo' approach to pandemic management, which I think is a justifiable strategy to manage the balance we're seeking. In fact, at this point I'm not sure if there are really any other viable strategies left on the table for us to pursue besides 'yo yo' other than draconian lockdown, which I don't think anyone wants. The question then becomes do we want the yo yo to be wildly swinging up and down or do we want a much smaller variation in the crests and troughs of the waves. As I see it, the latter option is clearly preferable despite requiring a tighter leash on capacity restrictions than you'd like to see, for example, but those are going to be the relevant parameters of this debate going forward.

 

Edited August 6, 2020 by ruraljuror

[Nash_12South]

I'm not calling for anything in particular. I don't see anywhere getting beyond 75% capacity until we have a vaccine, next year. I think we need to figure out some way to allow the bars to open at some level, to not go broke. I'd guess at 50%, but I don't pretend to know how  you monitor that. It may be that bars cannot reopen at all. That's why I enter the discussion, to hear other's opinions.  I'm just throwing out ideas, observations, not trying to preach as to what's the best course. I get a little mystified on the need to parse every sentence and phrase to refute what are simply one person's observations. 

Edited August 6, 2020 by Nash_12South

[DDIG]

13 hours ago, ruraljuror said:

I'm genuinely curious what you're advocating for here.  What would you like us to be doing differently?

Do you want to reopen everything? Because it seems to me that plenty of places have tried that already (and keep trying it), and it's usually only a matter of weeks before cases flare up and they do a 180.  You casually mention that the last batch of hotspots have tampered down now, but you completely ignore that they all implemented a bunch of new restrictions once they became a hotspot, not to mention the fact that being located in a place that attains hotspot status creates a revived fear in people that causes their behavior to change in favor of safety and isolation.  These phenomena are not unrelated.

And I think you'll agree that the 'case count obsession' is a little superficially dismissive of the situation here.  I'm sure you've read that we've lost more Americans to Covid than we lost in any single war besides WWII and the Civil War, and those lives were lost over periods of several years, not several months.  To be clear,  I'm not framing the Covid death count this way in order to wrap my argument in the flag and grandstand - death is death and doesn't care if it's glorified or not - but I do think the war analogy provides good context to the scope of the tragedy we're facing and the death toll certainly deserves to be acknowledged instead of focusing your attention exclusively on the case count if you're going to be advocating for returning to business as usual.

Further, it seems like you're glossing over the fact that all of these Covid cases (and the unmentioned resulting deaths) have happened while a significant portion of the population have been practicing unprecedented levels of mask wearing, hand washing, social distancing, and sheltering in place. You're right that one of our primary goals has been to avoid overwhelming the hospitals, but what do you think will happen if everyone stops doing all of the mask wearing, hand washing, social distancing, and sheltering in place all at once? 

Humanity is definitely flawed, and I agree that government policies should reflect that reality, but plenty of countries (in fact, almost all of them) have done better than we Americans have in our Covid response.  Why do you think we're doing worse than most places? I don't mean that question or any of the other questions in this post rhetorically, I'm sincerely hoping you can give me some insight into your thought process here, because I read your posts but I still have no idea about what you'd like to see happen next.

 

I'm not advocating for stopping social distancing, mask wearing, etc. I am saying COVID isn't a zero sum game. Many people will die due the ripples of prolonged lock down (and in most cases younger and healthier people than COVID's victim profile) and negative outcomes will persist for years if not decades. There are people who want Nashville back in Phase 0 until the virus is gone. There are teacher's unions saying they will not go back to school until their district has 14 consecutive days without a new COVID case (which may be... never). There are not many honest conversations about this highly politicized, and yes deadly, virus at this point. 

For my "radical" ideas, I do think schools should be returned in a  controlled mask wearing setting. The science backs it. CDC and pediatricians back it. We're risking kids being isolated and not learning anything for a year+ (trust me, virtual learning is not achieving anything unless you have the means for around the clock tutoring), let's see the long-term effects of that. For example, I saw media last night reporting on one 2nd grader in Georgia catching the virus like this was the end of schools - if there is one positive about the virus, it is less of a threat to kids than the Flu. I think the frequent shaming we see of people outside or gathering with friends is more hurtful than helpful. I think Bars should open the same as restaurants (capacity limits, seated only) and if they violate those stipulations they should be shut back down. I think early on we did a horrible job of picking winners and losers at the expense of small businesses by letting Target and Walmart stay open and closing mom and pop shops.

In all I'd like to see more solution and consensus building to solving challenges and rational conversation about best implementing CDC guidelines and getting small businesses running and kids back at school. Versus the overwhelming anger and headline shaming that dominates the narrative.

Edited August 6, 2020 by DDIG

[ruraljuror]

3 hours ago, Nash_12South said:

I'm not calling for anything in particular. I don't see anywhere getting beyond 75% capacity until we have a vaccine, next year. I think we need to figure out some way to allow the bars to open at some level, to not go broke. I'd guess at 50%, but I don't pretend to know how  you monitor that. It may be that bars cannot reopen at all. That's why I enter the discussion, to hear other's opinions.  I'm just throwing out ideas, observations, not trying to preach as to what's the best course. I get a little mystified on the need to parse every sentence and phrase to refute what are simply one person's observations. 

 

I agree with your prediction about the importance of the vaccine in terms of the reopening schedule, and I also agree that bars can not just be abandoned until then and left to wither on the vine.

 

At this risk of mystifying you even further, however, I wasn't refuting your observations in your previous post. In fact, I even agreed with what I deduced to be your proscribed strategy of choice. I just wanted to point out that making adjustments to the supply side of the issue you raised (restaurant capacity caps) doesn't necessarily affect the demand side of the issue (with lots of people still avoiding public spaces as much as possible and with lots of people either out of work or trying to save money in case they lose their job in the near future). 

 

Also, I thought it might be informative to highlight that if one of your primary concerns is widespread, non-chain restaurant closure (which I also agree is a very valid concern), then it might be worth acknowledging that those same restaurant caps could be helping distribute some of the limited demand in a way that helps more restaurants stay open through these tough times.

 

In sum, I wasn't trying to contradict you so much as I wanted to supplement some of your lines of thinking that I generally agree with. That said, I am certainly aware that my 'parsing' can be pretty obnoxious, so I don't blame you if that's your natural reaction to my posts here. To me, the alternative is speaking in generalities and talking past each other in away that doesn't lead to very meaningful communication, so I parse my heart out - sometimes for better and sometimes for worse.

 

 

 

[ruraljuror]

3 hours ago, DDIG said:

I'm not advocating for stopping social distancing, mask wearing, etc. I am saying COVID isn't a zero sum game. Many people will die due the ripples of prolonged lock down (and in most cases younger and healthier people than COVID's victim profile) and negative outcomes will persist for years if not decades. There are people who want Nashville back in Phase 0 until the virus is gone. There are teacher's unions saying they will not go back to school until their district has 14 consecutive days without a new COVID case (which may be... never). There are not many honest conversations about this highly politicized, and yes deadly, virus at this point. 

For my "radical" ideas, I do think schools should be returned in a  controlled mask wearing setting. The science backs it. CDC and pediatricians back it. We're risking kids being isolated and not learning anything for a year+ (trust me, virtual learning is not achieving anything unless you have the means for around the clock tutoring), let's see the long-term effects of that. For example, I saw media last night reporting on one 2nd grader in Georgia catching the virus like this was the end of schools - if there is one positive about the virus, it is less of a threat to kids than the Flu. I think the frequent shaming we see of people outside or gathering with friends is more hurtful than helpful. I think Bars should open the same as restaurants (capacity limits, seated only) and if they violate those stipulations they should be shut back down. I think early on we did a horrible job of picking winners and losers at the expense of small businesses by letting Target and Walmart stay open and closing mom and pop shops.

In all I'd like to see more solution and consensus building to solving challenges and rational conversation about best implementing CDC guidelines and getting small businesses running and kids back at school. Versus the overwhelming anger and headline shaming that dominates the narrative.

 

First, I agree that there are relevant mortality and economic considerations that come with any potential course of action we might take, whether it's Phase 0 or Phase 1001. You're also right that if the standard for opening schools is 14 consecutive days without a new Covid case in the county, then schools could potentially stay shuttered forever (although that concern becomes moot in the event that an effective vaccine, prophylactic, or cure is developed).

 

And to be clear, I don't expect you (or anyone else here) to have some kind of magic bullet solution in mind that can solve all of our Covid problems. My main goal in entering this discussion was to clarify what you actually wanted to see happen here- i.e. what changes to our city's/state's/country's Covid response would you recommend? No radical ideas are necessary - I just wanted to know what you've got in mind.

 

When people complain about the lockdown without brining up specific restrictions they'd like to see lifted or specific actions they'd like to see taken instead , I gives me the distinct feeling of being on a very long car trip with somebody asking 'Are we there yet?' every half hour.  We're all tired of being in the car, we all would love to be done riding in the car - sure, we can get out and stretch our legs every once in a while, but that's not going to get us to our destination any more quickly or efficiently.

 

I appreciate you being more specific in your latest post above. I think the shame factor is definitely an interesting point to raise. Shame has historically been a pretty good cudgel to wield in terms of getting people to do fewer stupid (but otherwise legal) things. Also, since there's no shame police or shame judges, the court of public opinion is the only place to get a ruling on the Covid shame issue, and it's not easy to get on that docket. That said, if appealing to public opinion was the goal in your previous post (i.e. winning the hearts and minds of some Urban Planeteers and/or feeling less isolated in your opinions) then your post seems to have served you well based on the number of positive responses it received.

 

The school issue is a little less abstract and more concrete. I too want the schools to be open. In fact, the relevant question may not even be whether or not schools should be open, but whether they can be open. Here's an article about a school in Mississippi that opened a couple weeks ago, and now has 116 students home in quarantine:  

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/08/06/school-coronavirus-outbreak-mississippi/

Schools (especially lower schools) are notorious vectors for disease to the point it's a cliche that the whole family gets sick every year a week or two after school starts each Fall because the kids pass around germs and viruses so efficiently. Further, I'm not all that confident that opening schools will be all that big of a boost to the economy if that's one of the primary motivations for wanting the classrooms back in session, but I'm definitely open to seeing some evidence to the contrary and changing my mind. 

 

Which brings me to my final point - you're right that this isn't a zero sum game. The relevant question then becomes 'what kind of game is it?' 

 

@Soundscan brought up the very good point that the primary goal we collectively set will determine the best course of action. If our primary goal was minimizing deaths, then we should all be forced cover our doors and windows with cellophane and lock ourselves away for 2 months -  with serious jail time penalties for anyone who leaves their house. Nobody wants that.

 

On the other hand, everyone wants to get the economy back to being as strong as possible as soon as possible, so it seems like that should be the goal we're pursuing, and accordingly we should be implementing any and every policy that best helps us to achieve that goal. Does getting the court of public opinion to stop shaming people for not social distancing etc. help achieve that goal? Does opening up schools next week help achieve that goal? Even if we accept some sickness and death as collateral damage (which we do), the sickness and death rates will certainly have direct economic impacts that will affect supply chains, and business operations in addition to having obvious effects on the demand side of the equation, as noted above. This is where the rubber meets the road in terms of finding the right balance, which is why I think it's important to address specific courses of action in these discussions instead of generalized complaints that we all mostly share.

 

I don't have these answers to these questions any more than anyone else here does, but I do know the answer to the question 'Are we there yet?. That answer is a resounding 'No.' 

Of course - if we wanted to - we could get out of the car and walk the rest of the way, but that's going to make for a very long and painful trip.

[AsianintheNations]

Since this is the sort of the COVID thread now, figured it would be the best place for this. A few weeks back, @DDIG posted a link to a heat map of Davidson county COVID-19 cases. The Davidson County COVID dashboard started updating a similar map weekly, and I wondered whether this ended up functionally being a map of population density. The side-by-side comparison is below:

Left: COVID-19 case map, last updated 8/3/20, from https://nashville.maps.arcgis.com/apps/MapSeries/index.html?appid=30dd8aa876164e05ad6c0a1726fc77a4
Right: Davidson County population density by census tract, 2010, from https://statisticalatlas.com/county/Tennessee/Davidson-County/Population#data-map/tract

There’s at least a superficial resemblance, but the real question is whether higher density areas have a higher per capita case incidence and not just a higher total caseload proportional to their population. That is, are there truly “hot spots?" That’s hard to tell from a heatmap as vague as the COVID map, so I gathered up the raw data by zip code (since that is as granular as COVID cases are being reported), using the 2014-2018 ACS data for population and the most recently reported COVID cases by zip code I could find (July 28). I excluded zip codes with fewer than 1000 residents or with an area less than 1 mi^2, as those would be particularly prone to irregularities due to the census using ZCTAs rather than true zip codes.

After computing the population density of each zip code and plotting density vs. COVID incidence (presented as % of population infected), here’s what I got:

So basically, a weak trend towards higher per capita cases at higher densities, with the two “hot spots” sticking out at the top being 37203 (Gulch, Midtown, Wedgewood-Houston) and 37228 (Metro Center, a weird case where most of the land is non-residential and residents live in just a few apartment complexes). At the bottom right, 37212 (Hillsboro, part of Music Row, Vandy, and Belmont) stands out as having a very low per capita rate for its density, but the fact that all the undergrads were sent home would have significantly impacted the effective population in that zip code (and perhaps argues that that was a good decision).

Here’s what the trend looks like without those three outliers:

There certainly seems to be a trend towards higher per capita infection rates in denser zip codes. But I wanted to see if I could avoid the cherry-picking, so I went back to the drawing board to see if there might be another variable that could correlate better with COVID rates (definitely emphasizing that none of this implies direct causation). It turned out that median household income had a better R-squared value than the graph above  while still including 37203, 37212, and 37228 (R^2 is the percent of the variation in y that can be explained by variation in x; I used an exponential decay regression curve here since it wouldn't make sense to fit a line that would imply negative infection rates at a certain income level):

 

There’s obviously a ton of factors wrapped up in median household income, but I would guess that the proportion of people considered “essential workers” is a major underlying cause here, with more higher-income folks able to work from home. I did check to see if number of people per household show have any trend, but that was not the case; square feet of living space per person might be more informative, but I don't know of such data. There's a lot written about race already (e.g. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/07/05/us/coronavirus-latinos-african-americans-cdc-data.html), so I did not analyze that dimension separately.

Here are the raw data I used, in case anyone’s interested or wants to fact-check (I’ll happily correct any errors you find):

Sources:
2010 population: 2010 U.S. census data
2018 population estimates, median household income, land area by zip code: American Community Survey, 2014-2018
COVID cases as of 7/28/20 by zip code: https://tennesseelookout.com/2020/07/30/a-snapshot-of-julys-rising-numbers-of-covid-19-cases-in-nashville-by-zip-code/

Edited August 7, 2020 by AsianintheNations
fixed formatting

[DDIG]

8 hours ago, AsianintheNations said:

Since this is the sort of the COVID thread now, figured it would be the best place for this. A few weeks back, @DDIG posted a link to a heat map of Davidson county COVID-19 cases. The Davidson County COVID dashboard started updating a similar map weekly, and I wondered whether this ended up functionally being a map of population density. The side-by-side comparison is below:

Left: COVID-19 case map, last updated 8/3/20, from https://nashville.maps.arcgis.com/apps/MapSeries/index.html?appid=30dd8aa876164e05ad6c0a1726fc77a4
Right: Davidson County population density by census tract, 2010, from https://statisticalatlas.com/county/Tennessee/Davidson-County/Population#data-map/tract

There’s at least a superficial resemblance, but the real question is whether higher density areas have a higher per capita case incidence and not just a higher total caseload proportional to their population. That is, are there truly “hot spots?" That’s hard to tell from a heatmap as vague as the COVID map, so I gathered up the raw data by zip code (since that is as granular as COVID cases are being reported), using the 2014-2018 ACS data for population and the most recently reported COVID cases by zip code I could find (July 28). I excluded zip codes with fewer than 1000 residents or with an area less than 1 mi^2, as those would be particularly prone to irregularities due to the census using ZCTAs rather than true zip codes.

After computing the population density of each zip code and plotting density vs. COVID incidence (presented as % of population infected), here’s what I got:

So basically, a weak trend towards higher per capita cases at higher densities, with the two “hot spots” sticking out at the top being 37203 (Gulch, Midtown, Wedgewood-Houston) and 37228 (Metro Center, a weird case where most of the land is non-residential and residents live in just a few apartment complexes). At the bottom right, 37212 (Hillsboro, part of Music Row, Vandy, and Belmont) stands out as having a very low per capita rate for its density, but the fact that all the undergrads were sent home would have significantly impacted the effective population in that zip code (and perhaps argues that that was a good decision).

Here’s what the trend looks like without those three outliers:

There certainly seems to be a trend towards higher per capita infection rates in denser zip codes. But I wanted to see if I could avoid the cherry-picking, so I went back to the drawing board to see if there might be another variable that could correlate better with COVID rates (definitely emphasizing that none of this implies direct causation). It turned out that median household income had a better R-squared value than the graph above  while still including 37203, 37212, and 37228 (R^2 is the percent of the variation in y that can be explained by variation in x; I used an exponential decay regression curve here since it wouldn't make sense to fit a line that would imply negative infection rates at a certain income level):

 

There’s obviously a ton of factors wrapped up in median household income, but I would guess that the proportion of people considered “essential workers” is a major underlying cause here, with more higher-income folks able to work from home. I did check to see if number of people per household show have any trend, but that was not the case; square feet of living space per person might be more informative, but I don't know of such data. There's a lot written about race already (e.g. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/07/05/us/coronavirus-latinos-african-americans-cdc-data.html), so I did not analyze that dimension separately.

Here are the raw data I used, in case anyone’s interested or wants to fact-check (I’ll happily correct any errors you find):

Sources:
2010 population: 2010 U.S. census data
2018 population estimates, median household income, land area by zip code: American Community Survey, 2014-2018
COVID cases as of 7/28/20 by zip code: https://tennesseelookout.com/2020/07/30/a-snapshot-of-julys-rising-numbers-of-covid-19-cases-in-nashville-by-zip-code/

Woah, impressive stuff. On 37203, Wedgewood Houston area had a couple outbreaks at halfway homes with near triple digit numbers and that bumped them on the scene in a big way. Metro Center is perplexing, I wonder if there's something there that could have an outbreak we are overlooking. A prison or anything share its zipcode?

[AsianintheNations]

56 minutes ago, DDIG said:

Metro Center is perplexing, I wonder if there's something there that could have an outbreak we are overlooking.

I'm not aware of any prisons or nursing homes there, but the metro center 37228 zip code has very few residents compared to the others (barely made the 1000 resident cutoff that I used) - to my knowledge the only residential buildings are the Villas at Metro Center, Parc at Metro Center, Preserve at Metrocenter, Metrocenter Teachers' Apartments, Granstaff Apartments, and The Duke Nashville. These are all in one corner of the zip code, and the functional population density there is closer to 10,000/mi^2. An outbreak at any one complex could easily bump the case rate very high. Likewise, if the ACS population estimates don't account for construction of The Duke (which probably has ~400 residents added since 2017), then the population estimate would also be off by a decent amount and that affects both the calculation of pop density and cases per capita.

Based on the link with the breakdown of cases by zipcode, almost all of the 58 cases in 37228 occurred between 7/6 and 7/28.

Edited August 7, 2020 by AsianintheNations