- The "Tech Elite" who are leaving are, by definition, the ones who have the financial freedom to go pretty much wherever they want. Anyone mentioned in this article could buy a house in Miami/Austin/Denver without worrying about any transaction costs if they turn around and sell it in 6 months.
- SF (and California in general) are being much more aggressive with anti-COVID policies.
- The cities that are being focused on (Miami and Austin) are overall pretending that COVID isn't a thing (I live in Austin, and this is my experience).
- Well-off individuals currently under lock-down are looking at people living "freely" in Florida/Texas and are jealous, because they think that the SF-lockdown rules shouldn't apply to them, because they are less at risk (this is a discussion for another day)
- They've now set themselves up with a plausible "I moved out of California. My reason was COVID." story to try to avoid paying California state taxes in the future, even if they still end up being back in SF the majority of the time for their business.
tldr; the "elites" leaving are moving for short-term quality-of-life improvements due to COVID, and will have no issue turning around and moving back in 6-12 months when SF is "open for business" again.
Update: I have seen the shift in Austin from watching stories/tweets/social-media of people who have been moving from SF -> Austin. I was excited at first of the prospect of Austin become a much larger tech city, but am now noticing that the overwhelming majority of this content (although I could easily be seeing a biased sample, of course) is that the vocal group of "I moved from SF to Austin" is the same group that is extremely excited to go out to restaurants and public events again.