NON_POLITICAL China Coronavirus THREAD

[Torn Mind]

Apologies to anyone from Houston, but why would I want to visit there at all for any reason never mind compared to NYC?

Seriously I'm sure there are nice, scenic and/or historic places of interest in the Houston area but I can't think of one without using Google.

All about size. Big mosquitos, big land area. Didn't you know, everything is bigger in Texas, they say.

11 Reasons Why People are Moving to Houston

What are some of the top reasons people are moving to Houston? How about the pros and cons of living in Houston? We consulted a local expert to find out!

www.lifestorage.com

Doesn't like sound like a tourist's place, but rather for someone who has to live there.

And one can commingle with the more, ah, belligerent people of society.

 

[s0me0nesmind1]

Apologies to anyone from Houston, but why would I want to visit there at all for any reason never mind compared to NYC?

Seriously I'm sure there are nice, scenic and/or historic places of interest in the Houston area but I can't think of one without using Google.

Lots of reasons - well... as far as reasons to move here.

Space. We have suburbs all over of all types. Be in-city with shitty overpriced apartments if thats your thing.

Costs: Housing is cheap. No state income tax. Mostly relies on property taxes - but you can control if you want to live in a mansion or not, etc... You can get a decent house for < $150k in good areas.

Job Market: Growing like crazy. We used to be a big oil/gas town, but we have expanded much more now where we dont rely on just Oil/gas boom/busts as much - financial/accounting, consulting, tech, you name it - there's plenty here. Also NASA, of course.

Things to Do: We're good at eating I guess with tons of good restaurants? Haha. But no, we have everything any other big city has - events of all kinds, Chinatown, Latin culture events, Zoo, Museums, etc.. etc...



Overall it's going to depend a lot based on what type of person you are, main difference from NYC is you can actually buy a lot of land and have distance between people. You can actually have a yard and land where you can actually decide what to do with it.




Oh but as far as visiting? Yeah I dunno, theres NASA... Galveston for a shitty ugly beach.... museums/zoos.... lots of culture...But as far as beautiful scenery, yeah not much. Me and the wife actually married in Austin off near Lake Travis, definitely more beautiful out there as far as scenery.

 

[Zorba]

I see low death from covid in children in that cdc data. Basically little worse than the flu. We don't require kids to get the flu shots. You can say I'm heartless but that's what I see when I look at the cdc data.

About 4x the flu once adjusted for cases.

Again, how do you feel about all other childhood vaccinations? None of those diseases have a high death rate.

ETA: if we had an extremely effective flu shot it'd likely be mandatory too.

 

[Zorba]

Lots of reasons - well... as far as reasons to move here.

Space. We have suburbs all over of all types. Be in-city with shitty overpriced apartments if thats your thing.

Costs: Housing is cheap. No state income tax. Mostly relies on property taxes - but you can control if you want to live in a mansion or not, etc... You can get a decent house for < $150k in good areas.

Job Market: Growing like crazy. We used to be a big oil/gas town, but we have expanded much more now where we dont rely on just Oil/gas boom/busts as much - financial/accounting, consulting, tech, you name it - there's plenty here. Also NASA, of course.

Things to Do: We're good at eating I guess with tons of good restaurants? Haha. But no, we have everything any other big city has - events of all kinds, Chinatown, Latin culture events, Zoo, Museums, etc.. etc...



Overall it's going to depend a lot based on what type of person you are, main difference from NYC is you can actually buy a lot of land and have distance between people. You can actually have a yard and land where you can actually decide what to do with it.




Oh but as far as visiting? Yeah I dunno, theres NASA... Galveston for a shitty ugly beach.... museums/zoos.... lots of culture...But as far as beautiful scenery, yeah not much. Me and the wife actually married in Austin off near Lake Travis, definitely more beautiful out there as far as scenery.

Houston is one of those places I enjoy going for work, but I'd never book a vacation there.

 

[MrSquished]

This article alert pushed to my phone an hour ago:


Covid Can Make Kids Very Sick. Why Aren't More Being Vaccinated?

Bloomberg - Are you a robot?

 

[Svnla]

Texas is gaining population while NY and CA are losing. There you go.

One thing I dislike about Houston the most, even more than its humidity/heat during summer and the horrible traffic, is the almost anything goes in zoning (house), or lack of it.

 

[Artorias]

I pray this thing doesn't mutate into something completely immune.

We'll either have to deal with it, or have government face revolutions because no-one is putting up with more lockdowns.

 

[MrSquished]

Texas is gaining population while NY and CA are losing. There you go.

One thing I dislike about Houston the most, even more than its humidity/heat during summer and the horrible traffic, is the almost anything goes in zoning (house), or lack of it.

Your first point is pointless. What are you even responding to? We were talking about attractiveness to visitors. But as far as migration patterns, the primary driver of people leaving is cost of living, that generally happens to be high due to desirability and a subsequent lack of housing for everyone that wants to live there, due to various factors, including some bad zoning laws and NIMBY'sm- and the subsequent problems that arise due to a lack of housing. In other words, for the most part, Texas is basically just a Plan B for all those people after Plan A just got too pricey and is suffering some residuals from being too pricey.

As far as your implication that Houston's lack of zoning makes it an 'almost anything goes' place, this is 100% false. Houston technically has no zoning laws, but while that has ended up in a few kind of wacky situations of a small house next to a large parking structure, those are the rare exception rather than the rule. Houston has a lot of ordinances, deed restrictions, density rules, setback rules, historic districts, parking maximums, etc... that basically provide the same regulations that other cities just lump in under zoning laws. Saying Houston has an anything goes zoning policy implying it's the wild west of building is completely wrong. It's just a play on words that is very misleading.

This video breaks it down well:

Article has some points in it also:

Forget What You’ve Heard, Houston Really Does Have Zoning (Sort Of) | Kinder Institute for Urban Research

kinder.rice.edu

The thing about Houston is it is pretty much like many other cities in the country, with both some good attributes, but also has pretty much all the same worst attributes of cities with zoning laws that have accumulated insane sprawl, like Los Angeles, and have become completely auto-dependent cities unfriendly to walkability, other non-auto forms of transit like bikes and have terrible mass transit systems and lots of segregation based on class and race that is a direct result of those very rules and regulations and ordinances. At least Los Angeles couldn't build high because of earthquakes and lack of engineering to combat that back in the day. Although chances are it may have ended up in a similar sprawl situation, but we'll never know.

One thing Houston might need zoning for is it's murder rate. It's 2x as high as Los Angeles and 3x higher than New York City in the last year. Maybe they should have a zoning ordinance against murder?

 

[s0me0nesmind1]

Your first point is pointless. What are you even responding to? We were talking about attractiveness to visitors. But as far as migration patterns, the primary driver of people leaving is cost of living, that generally happens to be high due to desirability and a subsequent lack of housing for everyone that wants to live there, due to various factors, including some bad zoning laws and NIMBY'sm- and the subsequent problems that arise due to a lack of housing. In other words, for the most part, Texas is basically just a Plan B for all those people after Plan A just got too pricey and is suffering some residuals from being too pricey.

As far as your implication that Houston's lack of zoning makes it an 'almost anything goes' place, this is 100% false. Houston technically has no zoning laws, but while that has ended up in a few kind of wacky situations of a small house next to a large parking structure, those are the rare exception rather than the rule. Houston has a lot of ordinances, deed restrictions, density rules, setback rules, historic districts, parking maximums, etc... that basically provide the same regulations that other cities just lump in under zoning laws. Saying Houston has an anything goes zoning policy implying it's the wild west of building is completely wrong. It's just a play on words that is very misleading.

This video breaks it down well:

Article has some points in it also:

Forget What You’ve Heard, Houston Really Does Have Zoning (Sort Of) | Kinder Institute for Urban Research

kinder.rice.edu

The thing about Houston is it is pretty much like many other cities in the country, with both some good attributes, but also has pretty much all the same worst attributes of cities with zoning laws that have accumulated insane sprawl, like Los Angeles, and have become completely auto-dependent cities unfriendly to walkability, other non-auto forms of transit like bikes and have terrible mass transit systems and lots of segregation based on class and race that is a direct result of those very rules and regulations and ordinances. At least Los Angeles couldn't build high because of earthquakes and lack of engineering to combat that back in the day. Although chances are it may have ended up in a similar sprawl situation, but we'll never know.

One thing Houston might need zoning for is it's murder rate. It's 2x as high as Los Angeles and 3x higher than New York City in the last year. Maybe they should have a zoning ordinance against murder?

Houston isn't even in the top 65 listed here? While plenty of places in NY and CA are listed - such as Oakland which is really just code for "The crappy side of San Francisco" and San Bernardino which is really just code for the worst of LA.

Murder map: Deadliest U.S. cities

You might be surprised by the murder rates in major cities across the U.S.

www.cbsnews.com

But either way, back to the barn with you...

 

[MrSquished]

Houston isn't even in the top 65 listed here? While plenty of places in NY and CA are listed - such as Oakland which is really just code for "The crappy side of San Francisco" and San Bernardino which is really just code for the worst of LA.

Murder map: Deadliest U.S. cities

You might be surprised by the murder rates in major cities across the U.S.

www.cbsnews.com

But either way, back to the barn with you...

As per that article the data is from 2019, while we have been discussing 2020 and this year so far. Funnily enough most of the top 10 and top 15 on those list are in Southern States.

Perhaps you haven't been keeping up, but we have been talking spikes of crime in the last 16 months since Covid, when that subject came up and someone brought up crime in NYC was out of control. You can scroll back and read my links that show Houston's murder rate last year was very near 3x per capita higher than NY, and as per a Houston article from June this year, 2021 murders were higher than Los Angeles, a city twice it's size, which makes the per Capita rate 2x higher than Los Angeles, and since NYC has 8 million people, that makes it over 3x more murders per capita than NYC this year.

Funny how data works.

 

[s0me0nesmind1]

As per that article the data is from 2019, while we have been discussing 2020 and this year so far. Funnily enough most of the top 10 and top 15 on those list are in Southern States.

Perhaps you haven't been keeping up, but we have been talking spikes of crime in the last 16 months since Covid, when that subject came up and someone brought up crime in NYC was out of control. You can scroll back and read my links that show Houston's murder rate last year was very near 3x per capita higher than NY, and as per a Houston article from June this year, 2021 murders were higher than Los Angeles, a city twice it's size, which makes the per Capita rate 2x higher than Los Angeles, and since NYC has 8 million people, that makes it over 3x more murders per capita than NYC this year.

Funny how data works.

Lol the article is from April of 2021. We don't yet have the official FBI data for 2020 at this point, so... Don't care?

Also I just genuinely don't care. I don't care to defend blue run cities ever, because they are all shit run with tons of crime. So enjoy your hard on for NYC I guess?

I'll stay in my safe far outer suburbs, where we vote different and don't kid ourselves about cutting the police budgets with minimal resulting crime.

 

[MrSquished]

Lol the article is from April of 2021. We don't yet have the official FBI data for 2020 at this point, so... Don't care?

Also I just genuinely don't care. I don't care to defend blue run cities ever, because they are all shit run with tons of crime. So enjoy your hard on for NYC I guess?

The thing is the data says you are full of shit. I do love NYC, that is true, but the funny thing is, the data supports that your narrative is propaganda.

As per your article "These rates are calculated using the latest statistics available — the FBI's 2019 Crime in the United States data"

2019. Btw during 2019 crime in NYC was at truly historic lows. But whatever, no use in pulling that data as you are already ignoring what was posted already.

From looking at the FBI their data trails that of local police by far. They published the 2019 data in mid 2020. It seems they are behind the boots on the ground as they compile their nationwide info all around. My guess is a combination of bureaucracy and also just chasing down all the data from all the localities until it's all nationally complete and tidy.

So really, that article is not so relevant for comparing Houston to NYC during the Covid homicide and violent crime spike, which is when the media has been running with the narrative that NYC is an out of control crime death zone in today's urban landscapes, and what triggered this convo. Recent crime rates. Yes, NYC has seen a spike in violent crimes, but the narrative is misleading.

But we are comparing big cities here, during the last 16 months. NYC is numero uno in population, Houston is numoro quatro.

It really doesn't matter what you say, the numbers don't lie. Hey, I don't think Houston is a hellhole where people can't go out and need to break through barbed wire fences to go get groceries and wear body armor to restaurants on the rare night they are brave enough to go out or women can't wear their engagement rings in public like another poster said a wackadoo advised them of before they visited. Not in the slightest. I'm just projecting the narrative of NYC onto you wackadoos.

My point is this, that a bunch of messed up people push the propaganda that NYC is some murder/crime capital, where it's terrifying to step outside your apartment, mention 80's/90's crime rates in the same breath like it's even a valid prospect, meanwhile the 4th largest city in the US, Houston, HAS TRIPLE THE MURDER RATE and nobody says shit, and crime in NYC is similar to under Bloomberg, again where nobody was so alarmist. And I know NYC, I go there all the time, and I am friends with people that live there, and I know your narrative is garbage. It's worse than 2019, again that is true, but you should look inward first. I'm just proving a point.

Just exposing some BS using hard data, along with my own local experiences.

I'll stay in my safe far outer suburbs, where we vote different and don't kid ourselves about cutting the police budgets with minimal resulting crime.

Sucks to cower in the far outer suburbs of the city you live in where a lot of the amenities actually are. That really makes me sad. Tugs at my heartstrings.

I've been in the midst of NYC for the majority of my social gatherings every week since late January, not scared but just attentive of my surroundings like in any big city, enjoying the amenities of a city, tried all kinds of new restaurants, rode my bike about 300 miles over 10 rides through countless neighborhoods in three boroughs, and stopped to hang out in many, met about 12 single gals so far in that city on dates, and zero sounded as scared as you crying about staying safe in the burbs. They all live IN the city. Upper West, Upper East, Chelsea, FiDi, LES, various parts of Brooklyn, Midtown. I don't date girls from Queens, too far. I always ask about how are they, how was their covid experience, I mean none of these gals sound as scared as you just did not even by a mile. I've been in a huge amount of neighborhoods. Not saying everyone should go out in their city all the time, and not to be aware of danger, but to feel like you have to stay safe in your outer burbs like you just said? Man, that's horrific. I feel for you. Get a ranch or something out in the sticks, build an armory, a safe room and a moat. Pretty soon the burbs will be next dude.

 

[Muse]

I pray this thing doesn't mutate into something completely immune.

We'll either have to deal with it, or have government face revolutions because no-one is putting up with more lockdowns.

You know, that "lockdown" word is misleading. I mean there are all kinds of gradations of that. The Chinese when the alpha variant was exploding in Wuhan would nail people's doors shut, I think literally. Now THAT's a lockdown. But where I am (over 65% at least one shot), people are wary. I don't know how educated they are but a lot of people are wearing masks outdoors and I assume a high percent indoors. Is that a lockdown? What happens is what happens but revolutions caused by a pandemic? Can you cite me some examples of that?

 

[Svnla]

Your first point is pointless. What are you even responding to? We were talking about attractiveness to visitors. But as far as migration patterns, the primary driver of people leaving is cost of living, that generally happens to be high due to desirability and a subsequent lack of housing for everyone that wants to live there, due to various factors, including some bad zoning laws and NIMBY'sm- and the subsequent problems that arise due to a lack of housing. In other words, for the most part, Texas is basically just a Plan B for all those people after Plan A just got too pricey and is suffering some residuals from being too pricey.

As far as your implication that Houston's lack of zoning makes it an 'almost anything goes' place, this is 100% false. Houston technically has no zoning laws, but while that has ended up in a few kind of wacky situations of a small house next to a large parking structure, those are the rare exception rather than the rule. Houston has a lot of ordinances, deed restrictions, density rules, setback rules, historic districts, parking maximums, etc... that basically provide the same regulations that other cities just lump in under zoning laws. Saying Houston has an anything goes zoning policy implying it's the wild west of building is completely wrong. It's just a play on words that is very misleading.

This video breaks it down well:

Article has some points in it also:

Forget What You’ve Heard, Houston Really Does Have Zoning (Sort Of) | Kinder Institute for Urban Research

kinder.rice.edu

The thing about Houston is it is pretty much like many other cities in the country, with both some good attributes, but also has pretty much all the same worst attributes of cities with zoning laws that have accumulated insane sprawl, like Los Angeles, and have become completely auto-dependent cities unfriendly to walkability, other non-auto forms of transit like bikes and have terrible mass transit systems and lots of segregation based on class and race that is a direct result of those very rules and regulations and ordinances. At least Los Angeles couldn't build high because of earthquakes and lack of engineering to combat that back in the day. Although chances are it may have ended up in a similar sprawl situation, but we'll never know.

One thing Houston might need zoning for is it's murder rate. It's 2x as high as Los Angeles and 3x higher than New York City in the last year. Maybe they should have a zoning ordinance against murder?

You can't dispute my first point as incorrect, so more bullcrap to spin.

My second point and you claimed "this is 100% false". Oh really? Directly from the Planning and Development Department of Houston.

The City of Houston does not have zoning

Planning and Development (houstontx.gov)

You were saying? LOL x 100000000.

You need to stick to P+N and do what you do best, projecting your obsession about penis size.

Get lost.

 

[ch33zw1z]

You can't dispute my first point as incorrect, so more bullcrap to spin.

My second point and you claimed "this is 100% false". Oh really? Directly from the Planning and Development Department of Houston.



Planning and Development (houstontx.gov)

You were saying? LOL x 100000000.

You need to stick to P+N and do what you do best, projecting your obsession about penis size.

Get lost.

You clearly didn't read his post, lol.

 

[Svnla]

You clearly didn't read his post, lol.

Get lost. Slow day in P+N?

LOL.

Starting here, and continuing for post after post, it is YOU who have angrily brought politics into this discussion.

Perknose
Forum Director

 

[ch33zw1z]

All about size. Big mosquitos, big land area. Didn't you know, everything is bigger in Texas, they say.

11 Reasons Why People are Moving to Houston

What are some of the top reasons people are moving to Houston? How about the pros and cons of living in Houston? We consulted a local expert to find out!

www.lifestorage.com

Doesn't like sound like a tourist's place, but rather for someone who has to live there.

And one can commingle with the more, ah, belligerent people of society.

I like the fact you found this article on life storage blog. I use life storage up in MA, never new they even had a blog 😁

 

[ch33zw1z]

Get lost. Slow day in P+N?

LOL.

Like I've said before, I post when and where I like. You're not the admin, and don't get to control others.

 

[Svnla]

Like I've said before, I post when and where I like. You're not the admin, and don't get to control others.

As I told you many times before. Stop follow me around like a pathetic lapdog. Get a clue. Good grief. See how I will ignore you like a loser that you are. Go insult another person's mom and do what you do best.

LOL.

 

[ch33zw1z]

As I told you many times before. Stop follow me around like a pathetic lapdog. Get a clue. Good grief.

LOL.

Wowzers. You certainly are egocentric. Nobody is "following you around", weirdo.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

Sounds like good news to me, particularly since my Parents and I have moderna vax cards.

MSN

 

[K1052]

Sounds like good news to me, particularly since my Parents and I have moderna vax cards.

MSN

They (like Pfizer) think a booster, presumably to cut transmission and symptomatic cases, will be needed. Delta wasn't prevalent when they were doing the analysis.

I know there is concern about places like the US sucking up limited doses but it looks like boosting with 50 micrograms instead of 100 can mitigate that a bit since it appears effective.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1423244231833964549

https://twitter.com/x/status/1423244672676343812

 

[Fanatical Meat]

They (like Pfizer) think a booster, presumably to cut transmission and symptomatic cases, will be needed. Delta wasn't prevalent when they were doing the analysis.

I know there is concern about places like the US sucking up limited doses but it looks like boosting with 50 micrograms instead of 100 can mitigate that a bit since it appears effective.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1423244231833964549

https://twitter.com/x/status/1423244672676343812

Cool thank you for the understandable explanation

 

[ponyo]

I look at stock prices and market caps of Modern and BioNTech and it's obvious the market thinks covid will be around for very long time, possibly forever. Market is forward looking and that's what it sees.

 

[Muse]

Sounds like good news to me, particularly since my Parents and I have moderna vax cards.

MSN

I have a Moderna vax card too, with two signatures and batch numbers.

Moderna has been developing a range of boosters and testing them in clinical trials. On Thursday the company reported that a booster containing half a dose of the original formulation strengthened the antibodies against the Delta variant substantially above the levels seen shortly after volunteers received their two original doses.

In an earnings call last week, Pfizer also said that its booster raised antibodies above their original level. Both studies have yet to be published in a scientific journal.