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Tesla is not essential business as defined in the Alameda County Health Order
- jsight 7y agoWhy is the Sheriff the one pointing this out on Twitter? EDIT: The earlier coverage included this quote: "What’s essential about automobile manufacturing in the midst of a viral pandemic? “That’s a good question,” said spokesman Ray Kelly, promising more information would be forthcoming. “We’re in uncharted waters right now.”" There are different ways to interpret that, but they seemingly were not confident at the time. Still a strange way to "correct" it, though.
- HumblyTossed 7y agoIsn't Twitter where official government business is handled now?
- dang 7y agoThe previous thread on this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22607357 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22607357
- pkaye 7y agoI live close to that plant. I hope they don't just keep spreading that virus and negate the effort we are doing by the "shelter in place". I'm a dialysis patient myself and have no idea what this virus will do to me. I'll probably be cannon fodder if the health system is overloaded.
- manicdee 7y agoAre you in contact with people from the plant or do you use separate toilets, cafes, and supermarkets? Shelter in place is about preventing person-to-person spread of the disease through direct contact or via intermediary such as a bench, chair or physical currency. COVID-19 is not going to spread from the plant to your house without some kind of transmission mechanism.
- kragen 7y agoIt could plausibly spread between workers at the plant, whether while working, while commuting, while on break, while passing through doors, or via touch surfaces such as doorknobs.
- manicdee 7y agoSame everywhere. Grocers are still going to be open.
- 6gvONxR4sf7o 7y agotesla working living in fremont to tesla working living in alameda to supermarket worker in alameda to other alameda residents.
- lmeyerov 7y agoAlameda county, as with most of the counties in the bay area, already has outbreaks. Shelter in place gives time for current cases to go symptomatic & become traceable, among other benefits. Testing only effectively started last week, and is still a joke compared to what other countries with outbreaks of this level are doing. I'm suspecting Tesla is employing sock puppets, or people with too much invested in Tesla, are overly eager to void the shelter-in-place effort for an arbitrary 10K people.
- manicdee 7y agoTesting only helps if sensible and sustainable transmission control protocols are in place. Shelter-is-place is absolutely unsustainable, and wholesale testing of the population is economically infeasible in a population the size of California. There have been successes with wholesale testing in towns in Italy but those populations are small enough to test while everyone is quarantined for a short period. Then when the quarantine ends the disease will spread anyway thanks to false negatives or new imports.
- pkaye 7y agoI'm not in contact with people in the plant. I'm just not sure if they can maintain the social distancing with the number of workers in that plant. If they keep spreading the virus between themselves it means the shelter in place may need to extended longer because the cases keep increasing. I wish there was more extensive testing so we can assess how concerned we should be of community spread.
- ginsing 7y agoIt will do just the same as any other flu.
- pengaru 7y agoInfluenza is a completely different family of virus, COVID-19 is not another flu. The realm Riboviria is where they diverge, which is pretty far up there. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronaviridae https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronaviridae https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthomyxoviridae https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthomyxoviridae
- kragen 7y agoPlease don't use HN to spread misinformation that could cause massive numbers of deaths.
- gjs278 7y agolol if a massive number of people die due to HN misinformation it was probably good that they went
- ghastmaster 7y agohttps://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/preliminary-in-season-estimates.htm https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/preliminary-in-season-e... >CDC estimates* that, from October 1, 2019, through March 7, 2020, there have been: 22,000-55,000 That's 4,400 deaths per month in the United States on the low estimate. 11,000 on the high. https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/situation-reports/20200317-sitrep-57-covid-19.pdf?sfvrsn=a26922f2_2 https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/situati... Total worldwide deaths according to the CDC so far for covid-19 is equal to 7426 since the beginning in let's say December to give it the worst rates. That equals 1865 deaths per month. https://www.globalresearch.ca/flu-bigger-concern-wuhan-virus-grabs-headlines/5701932 https://www.globalresearch.ca/flu-bigger-concern-wuhan-virus... >5 Million Cases Worldwide, 650,000 Deaths Annually (influenza) That's 54,000 deaths per month for the whole world. Covid-19 is currently at 3.5% of the worldwide deaths of influenza with 1/4th of the year over. Hopefully this is not considered misinformation that will cause massive numbers of deaths.
- dntbnmpls 7y agoWe've already had a few tesla related posts on this exact topic the past few hours alone. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22606140 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22606140 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22607357 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22607357
- jsight 7y agoThose were about Tesla's decision. This is the government saying that Tesla's decision was unlawful, which is a different subject.
- jsight 7y agoTo be fair to Tesla, they are much less likely to spread the virus than some of the "essential" services that are allowed to remain open. To be fair to the county, finding that perfect balance of what is essential and what is not is impossible. I can't blame them for coming down on this side of things.
- gentleman11 7y agoTo be fair to the employees, it’s nice to be able to stay safe
- jsight 7y agoThat's definitely true. I'm sure this calms a lot of anxiety on their part. And if there had been an outbreak, this could end up being life-saving.
- onlyrealcuzzo 7y agoTesla's Fremont factory employs 10k people. I imagine they work closely together, touch a lot of the same stuff, would be at high risk of transmitting this, but I really have no idea. This would almost certainly lead to 1-10+ deaths -- his workers directly or people infected by them. It would lead to hundreds of not thousands of cases of pneumonia and permanent lung damage. It could easily cost millions of dollars to the US tax payer in Medicare and Medicaid expenses. Shutting down production at Fremont for a couple werks shouldn't do much to the underlying fundamentals of Tesla -- it could actually be a good thing. Car sales are giving every indication they'll be heavily depressed for months -- if not til the end of the year. This is a selfish play by Elan to do anything (almost literally human sacrifice) to keep his stock price high.
- bluGill 7y agoDo they? I work at a factory and those doing production are in small teams (6 max, and your team is assigned for the duration of this crisis) that have it easy to never contact the next (except lunchtime and those of us with a desk are required to eat at our desks to give them more room - I'm working from home which is better yet) modern factories have most of the work done by robots, so it is easy to keep a robot between you and the next team.
- bdcravens 7y agoSad how most of the comments on that thread are focused around it being a conspiracy to affect Tesla's stock price.
- thrill 7y agoIt's the TSLA version of a Trump fanboy - anything that is not 100% supportive is trashed as 100% in opposition to whatever you hold dear. Room for nuance is quickly trolled away because it might leave room for people to think, "hey, that's not right...".
- jsight 7y agoI hang around both camps and they are exactly the same in that regard. One dismisses all negative commentary and the other dismisses all positive. The truth is more complicated than either group seems to want to believe. I did read some of the comments in response to that tweet and they were horrible.
- takeda 7y agoLooking at the names of these accounts it hardly looks like those people care about health.
- duxup 7y agoThe Tesla fans are true believers. On another site any comment or story that even seems negative is swarmed by fans there to tell you how it is. I asked a question a few times out of honest curiosity...the fans were there to tell me all about how the thing I didn't say was wrong and that I was surely a troll. Nobody bothered to answer.
- discordance 7y agoI'm surprised that people are surprised. The rules don't apply to wealthy people and organizations: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/03/coronavirus-testing-rich-people/608062/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/03/coronav...
- krick 7y agoProbably I'm just out of the loop, but I don't see how this is relevant. My understanding is that the point of the linked feed is that rules do apply to Tesla: it should stop operations, because it is not essential business (which is quite fair). So, yeah, I'm surprised that people are surprised as well, but in the exactly opposite way: it's weird they assume Tesla should be special somehow. Or am I missing something and Tesla did not stop operations for some reason? I'm just not seeing it mentioned anywhere.
- nkurz 7y ago> Or am I missing something and Tesla did not stop operations for some reason? You probably missed the earlier story, which is that Tesla believed they had obtained special permission to continue normal operations as an "essential business": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22607357 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22607357 This story is that Alameda County has since made clear that Tesla is not an "essential business" and is only allowed to "maintain minimum basic operations": https://www.kron4.com/news/alameda-county-officials-determine-tesla-is-not-an-essential-business-can-maintain-minimum-basic-operations/ https://www.kron4.com/news/alameda-county-officials-determin.... Presumably Tesla will comply with this?
- seanmcdirmid 7y agoHave other car factories had to shut down, or is the Tesla plant unique for being in an urban area? The UAW seems to be trying to get Michigan/Midwest plants shutdown, and of course the southern plants aren’t union.
- bluGill 7y agoSome are shutting down. Tesla is different because all their cars are ordered by someone and so shutting down impacts customers. Others are just building for market and since people are not buying now they are more interested in shutting down production because it just builds up inventory that they need to sell (often meaning a sale). I'm not going to comment on if they should shut down. With the right provision it is safer to go to work than stay home bored and tempted to go out and do something. this assumes many things not all that I'm aware of, and they might or might not be possible in the factory
- olivermarks 7y ago'Tesla is different because all their cars are ordered by someone and so shutting down impacts customers.' So what? Surely they can wait?
- justapassenger 7y agoTesla stopped building cars to order long time ago. They do keep inventory like anyone else. Smaller than others but still.
- bluGill 7y agoIf you are correct I stand corrected.
- rsynnott 7y ago> Tesla is different because all their cars are ordered by someone and so shutting down impacts customers. Eh? Who cares? Other manufacturers also have a downstream.
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- a3n 7y ago> Aw, you mean @elonmusk actually has to follow some rules? No. No he doesn't. Privilege has its privileges.
- treparist 7y agoIm really very tired of people who want to help me to save my life. I am not asking anybody to visit some places, but they don't want me to visit them too. And thats its basically a global hysteria, global stupidity and what happens when office have so much power to declare a lockdown. So so so stupid.
- avs733 7y agothis entire post is predicated on the assumption that you are an individual actor in society, independent of all others. That assumption is the lie at the heart of so much of human, especially American folly that I don't even know where to start. It isn't even an assumption, it is a belief. It is a belief that no one will change but those with power will gladly abuse. Please grow up.
- austhrow743 7y agoThere's no way to guarantee that you wont go to a hospital after getting sick. There's no guarantee you wont go to places afterwards that others have no choice to go to. It's not about saving you from yourself it's about saving others from you.
- treparist 7y agoMaybe we should stop treating people like a child? Maybe we don't need to "save" "others" and they can take care of themselves? Maybe we can stop to rely on "something" and start to be more rational? And yee, it will be much better for the economy and much better for ourselves.
- austhrow743 7y agoAdults don't go to the hospital? Fuck off troll.
- lmeyerov 7y agoIt isn't about you, especially if you're healthy and below 50. I do care about the people you'll help infect, including my wife who works in a hospital, the elderly in my home, my colleagues, my elderly parents, and plenty of other people I care about. I and others should absolutely go to bat for the health of their loved ones and dependents. It's disappointing technologists interested in building things doesn't get the community aspect of that, but not my fight.
- blendo 7y agoAre there any other factories in the SF Bay Area that require 10,000 on-site workers?
- generalpass 7y agoIt will cost Tesla less money to fight the quarantine order than to shut down production. Odds are Tesla wins in court and the authorities also know this, so won't actually do anything because they don't want the precedent. I'm not clear on how the Sheriff can act without a warrant or something, but sure he can tweet.
- olivermarks 7y agohttps://www.zerohedge.com/technology/elon-musk-chooses-keep-teslas-fremont-factory-open-despite-alameda-county-lockdown https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/elon-musk-chooses-keep-...