Reopening Dilemma
How do corporations get people to the 100th floor or even the 10th floor of a crowded building?
Texas tried reopening offices early. Now there is a surge and corporations don’t know how to deal with it.
Some companies brought back office workers in May or early June only to face coronavirus outbreaks within days or weeks. Others still can’t figure out how to send people up a 50-story skyscraper. Chevron says limiting riders on some elevators would create dangerous crowding in lobbies, so the company is telling its masked workers to refrain from speaking on the ride up.
Refilling Chevron Corp.’s two high-rise office towers in downtown Houston is a daunting task. Of 7,000 workers, roughly 350 are back, says Dave Payne, the company’s vice president of health, environment and safety. The company has parking spaces for less than a third of its employees. Previously, thousands had counted on van pools and public buses, which are currently deemed too risky. When arriving, employees must undergo a thermal imaging scan before entering the building.
Group 1 Automotive Inc., one of the nation’s largest publicly traded car dealership chains, kept its Houston headquarters open for a small number of employees until mid-June, when an employee contracted the virus, said Frank Grese, senior vice president of human resources.
After the positive Covid test, Group 1 shut its headquarters for two weeks as a precaution. It reopens Monday on a restricted basis, with employees only coming in when absolutely necessary and returning to remote work as quickly as possible, Mr. Grese says. Wearing a mask will be required and the building won’t have more than 15% of the employees who usually work there.
What Are Corporations Supposed to Do?
It is easy for people to protest in the streets as happened in Michigan and other places with Trump egging them on.
But if corporations do not provide a safe work environment, they are subject to huge lawsuits.
At a local level, a bar owner might decide “go to hell, this is my business” but one disgruntled customer who ends up with a $100,000 hospital bill and files suit could mean the end of that business.
It’s Not Just Deaths that Matter
There is too much emphasis on deaths and not enough on hospital costs, threats of lawsuits, and simple logistics like how do we safely get people to the 50th floor?
Reopenings in Reverse
Texas and Florida reopenings are now in reverse.
- Texas Shuts Bars at Noon as Covid Cases Surge
- Drinking Banned at Florida Bars and What About the NBA?
Apology Needed
On May 20, Sean Hannity told the “mob and the media” that they owe Florida Governor Ron DeSantis an apology.
Dear Sean Hannity: Who Owes Whom an Apology?
Mish
What nation U B in BA?
Nation of cowards, worry-worts and liars!
If they should be in the 50th floor, then they should be able to work remotely from home.
Lawsuits: If one attends a bar, as customer or employee, they should bear the liability to contracting COVID19. Isn’t it?
Hospital bills: Why is that the US medical costs are insanely higher than everywhere else?
All these issues are related to societal issues.
If one attends a bar, I presume he accepts the risk. However, if the bar is not in compliance with state mandates, the bar is going to be held responsible. For example, if the bar doesn’t enforce mandated distancing, or they exceed their recommended capacity, they might be held liable for cases. The problem will be to prove that the case was contracted in the bar, which won’t be easy.
Maybe start putting in some escalators, at least you can stand a couple of meters apart. Not sure how feasible it’d be for a 100 floors though.
Focusing all and every effort on ensuring than America’s dumbest, idlest and least useful; can extract maximum amount of rent for for as little, as as trashy an poorly constructed, space as humanly possible; will always result in space suboptimized for absolutely everything.
Robbing competent people to enrich idle nothings, will always result in low quality, low competence, low achievement, low overall wealth, low everything.
The only thing which will be high, is the share of wealth controlled, hence invariably wasted, by rank idiots too incompetent to do anything at all, aside from sitting there like chicklets screeching for Massa Fed and The Gommiment to ban someone else and bail out me and save my “liquidity” and sue someone, and who knows what.
The solution to too tight space, and too poorly ventilated space; in elevators and elsewhere, is more space. 10x current. Then, if that’s not enough 100x. Residential, commercial, what have you. Just keep adding. Knock down old junk and build better stuff. Bigger stuff. Taller stuff. More stuff. Again, like most else, for even half competent people, things aren’t that hard. It only looks hard, once the underlying goal is not improvement, but rather to ensure useless leeches can sit there idle, while extracting unearned rent as if their old junk somehow have any value anymore.
How about if we stop creating more people instead?
Considering the usefulness of the people “we” have been producing over the past 50+ years, that’s no doubt a good thing. The quicker the Taliban outnumber what passes for “us” these days sufficiently to take over, the better, after all.
“Reopening is quite a bit harder than anyone thought.”
Herd immunity was suppressed by shutting much of the economy down.
Back in the day there was a Fram oil filter commercial that had a tag line of “you can pay me now or pay me later.” Later is now.
They are also stuck in Sweden as none of the neighbors will open their borders to them.
“It’s Not Just Deaths that Matter”
The destruction of the economy and people’s lively hood, matters.
Exactly! Which is why covid matters: it’s the pretext for crashing the economy and destroying the Republic. Working well. Everybody believes that an extra 4 people per week dying in Texas means they all go back to the basement with Biden!
They should have just required masks and distancing from the start, and done more work at home, and let everything else stay open. People would have adapted, and business would still be down, of course, but it would have been a market reaction, not a government ordered one. My state hasn’t mandated masks, but has urged them. We never shut down. Business is still down significantly, but we are here. We also have a relatively low number of total deaths, and we do not, at least not yet, have a second surge.
As to surge:
So much for the under-counting talking point…
The first article is a joke. All tests have false positives. Most of the antibody tests have about 2-3% false positives, and the guess is that most of those are caused by antibodies to other coronaviruses. Can it happen? Sure. Is it a significant amount? 2-3% errors on the antibody tests compare favorably to the 20% errors we were seeing earlier on the nasal swab test. However, be aware that if you test positive for antibodies, that is no guarantee that you can’t catch coronavirus. Given that most antibody tests have a very low false negative rate, if it says you haven’t had it, you can be pretty sure that you haven’t had it.
The second article is similarly insignificant. Should they blend the results from the two tests? No. Did all the people who are tested positive by either method actually have the virus? Yes, except the small minority that had a false positive. Including the antibody tests will distort the statistics by making the death rate look lower, though.
Neither of these have anything to do with the fact that deaths will invariably be undercounted, for obvious reasons. Why do that have nothing to do with it? Um, because all these people with antibodies are recovered. Given that none of them died, they have no impact on the death statistics at all. For a variety of reasons, the death numbers are the important ones to watch. For one thing, “more tests” may give you more positives, but it doesn’t give you more deaths.
Someone needs to invent covidvision glasses so you can see the virus. Easier to avoid then!
The commercial aerospace business unit of my company sees no improvement in air travel since some restrictions were lifted. Business is expected to be severely down for the next 2 years, so the CEO announced layoffs will be coming. 90% of former air travelers are taking no chances.
First-replace the floor and ceiling of the elevator cab with open-grate material.
Strong vertical air-flow while the cab is in motion.
Second, increase HVAC flow, with less recycle air.
Third, install and regularly replace filters in the system.
Excellent plan!
“ It is easy for people to protest in the streets as happened in Michigan and other places with Trump egging them on.”
TDS;
IF FACTS =! NARRATIVE;
BLAME = TRUMP;
GOTO TDS;
Hi Mish. Looks like Denninger agrees with you. Long screed on how Trump has cooked his own goose over the past 3 1/2 years. Election night will be over when Florida is called for D candidate, whomever that may be.
What investment guidance do you have for strong probability of D sweep of President, Senate and Congress?
My base case is Gov and Fed going into an even higher gear to print. Do you agree?
Specifically what about –
Gold?
Silver?
Long Nasdaq?
Long anything alternative energy?
Long anything medical / pharma?
Long anything defense related?
Long whole stock market?
Short / puts on oil companies?
Shorts / puts in anything?
Paid for real estate?
Highly levered real estate with 30 year fixed rate?
Move away from large urban areas to a Doomstead?
I met you in person twice over beers at the resource conference in Rolling Meadows around 2008-2009. You asked this question around the table at the time. I used to post frequently on your site under a different handle in the js-kit days. I remember many good trader commenters in those days, like Gaudia Ray / Best Dog, Silver Bartender and Black Swan.
Please let me know, as I believe the time to act for the long term is running out like an hourglass.
Thank you.
All the best!
Fed going to print – the question is what benefits
The move in gold somewhat reflects that – but what will Congress do?
There are no sure answers
‘Flying Blind Into a Credit Storm’: Widespread Deferrals Mean Banks Can’t Tell Who’s Creditworthy
Bankers are tightening lending standards and looking for new data that can help them figure out who’s risky and who’s not
(sorry wsj paywall)
Offices have always been inoculation centers. People get sick all the time from that confinement. Maybe covid won’t kill you now, but sooner or later you’ll be old and weak enough that it will, assuming something worse doesn’t come along in the meantime.
The office has been a relic of another era, albeit one clung to tenaciously, like the fax machine, by people that simply can’t adapt. Until recently, those of us that CAN adapt have been humoring the ones that can’t. We’ve burnt gas and time, worn out our cars, and risked our lives and property on the freeway to get to a place we don’t need to be.
The office is over. Nobody wants to play virus roulette because a bunch of lackwits feels needy or can’t work their computers well enough to communicate.
It’s not the working of computers that is the issue. It is the bosses who can’t check/watch what their people are doing in real time that is the issue.
There is a lot of slavery talk these days. Working in a corporate office is akin to be a slave of the corporation.
Another problem in those 100 story buildings is in the HVAC units. Those may spread any aerosolized virus particles throughout the building.
I think Diamond Princess explained it quite clearly for us.
For lifts, setting up a strong vertical filtered ventilation in the space would help. Just don’t touch the walls of the lift… or the buttons… or…
My office “opened” today in Seattle, I bet less than 10 of 250 actually show up. The process to work in the office negates the benefits of going to the office. Here are some examples…
Plus, I bet 75% of staff commutes via public transportation or vanpools – who wants to do that? It’s going to be a slow, slow recovery.
We have contracts right now for the addition of elevator shafts in building, and have seen plans for the addition of shafts on the exterior of a couple of buildings.
Landlord desperation for sure. If the company owns the building it would be better off investing in its IT infrastructure. Most white collar workers can work from home.
“Reopening is quite a bit harder than anyone thought.”
…
Hhmm, what does the playbook say? …. oh yeah, that’s right …. some Federal Reserve mumbo jumbo + legislation that by and large provide huge gifts to the top 10% … and a pittance for everyone else … will it work THIS time?? …
Tony. The country is broke. Just wait when people can’t use the ebt cards and can’t buy toilet paper at Costco. That’s when the fireworks start!
“You can always count on Americans to do the right thing – after they’ve tried everything else”.
Winston Churchill
Yeah, well maybe in Winston’s day. Not sure that holds these days.
But I like one of his other quotes: “Never give up!”
There is much discussion about legal liability but a person can catch a virus anywhere and companies who follow County health guidelines should be protected but we don’t have any court precedents to rely on. That doesn’t mean it’s morally right to put your vulnerable workers at risk. However – federal unemployment is going to end soon for many people and we still have tens of millions out of work. Something has got to give.
This will be like car collision fraud. No one that reopens will be safe from a suit.
I was just talking with another contractor the other day and he told me a friend of his that leases a floor in a building for his insurance buss. is breaking the lease and having everyone work from home. Your elevator reference reminded me of it because this guy was having the same issue, how do you get people up there safely ? Seems like everyone has a health issue or lives with someone who has a health issue and the employer does bear some responsibility to keep the employees safe. Why take a chance of having to defend yourself in court, even if you win what a pain the ass.
Another conversation I had with a property manager told me people are just cleaning out the offices and breaking the lease when I asked about how they were dealing with the no eviction situation.
Commercial office space is sure to have some tough times ahead.
Virginia’s residential eviction moratorium ends today.
Moratorium / forbearance on the wane … as is fedgov stimulus. No doubt some more stimulus coming, but fully expect an ugly H2 as real economic state emerges (onslaught of defaults / delinquencies) from short term paper over-ing.
John Oliver’s subject last night. It will be the mother of all tsunamis.
“people are just cleaning out the offices and breaking the lease when I asked about how they were dealing with the no eviction situation.”
Them spending the money to move out of a place they don’t have to pay for tells us that that piece of real estate had negative value for them.
ruh roh….