Before covid rents in SF were among the highest in the world, which implies very high demand. I’m confident that many people still want to live in SF, e.g. single people like to cluster next to other single people. In other words working in tech is a draw but not the only draw for living in SF or any other urban area.

Money a lot of money,networking opportunities etc was THE draw.

There are dozens of cities that have everything else that SF has. If $$ goes away it will crash so hard it will make Detroit look like a model city.

My hope that after election hysteria is over and Vaccines get approved we will be back to something resembling normal by next summer. SF has a huge value as a place for tech with all its other faults it would suck to loose it

San Francisco was a popular city before the tech boom, and remains popular for much more than just software engineer networking. That doesn't mean losing the tech industry can't cause problems, of course, but saying that software is the only thing special about SF is like saying banking is the only thing special about Manhattan.

All the data I've read says they still are and landlords are still holding out for a covid fix (via vaccines I get) and overall rent has only fallen 5 or 6 %

Well, for starters, they're not. Even now the US's workforce is only around 30% remote. There are still plenty of jobs that don't work remotely.

And beyond that, people will continue to live in SF just because they want to, not because they have to for their job. Sure, some people will leave because they never really wanted to live here in the first place, but I promise you there are plenty of us who will stay, regardless.