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It's not just the politicians though: the private sector deserves just as much of the blame. Watching this unfold from inside BigCorp has been truly eye openin

It's not just the politicians though: the private sector deserves just as much of the blame. Watching this unfold from inside BigCorp has been truly eye opening. In a company of 100k people, nobody thought about preparedness or risk management. Instead, BigCorp bought its own stock on margin, and now it has to throw thousands of human beings at a worsening viral pandemic in order to generate cashflow. People are going to die so that the company can stay in business.

fit2rule 6y ago
I have to say, my opinion of Elon Musk has lowered as a result of how he's handling this situation. If he can't get things sorted here on Earth with regards to a pandemic response, how is it going to work out in 10 years when he has a Mars colony to govern? Is there even any plan for how a Mars society is going to proceed in these conditions? I guess its time to dust off the ol' Zubrin material and catch up with where things are these days, vis a vis the human factors of a Mars colony, but the seriously feudal rants of Musk lately are disheartening to say the least ..
koonsolo 6y ago
I don't know if you are running your own business, but it's just so hard to take into account all kinds of possible risks. It's just impossible to work like that. Most of the time you gamble which resources to put where. Else you end up in analysis paralysis.
- pbhjpbhj 6y ago
  We're talking about very large businesses. Risk analysts should have been anticipating a pandemic given the several near-misses (Ebola, SARS, MERS, H1N1, ...) that we've had recently. If you're a large business that risk is going to be significant enough to consider. When I took family holiday insurance in early January, I had to check that pandemics were covered, and they were specifically mentioned. So I'd expect them to be a general part of risk analysis. A pandemic that's covered by insurance is a massive risk for an insurance company, so it's always going to be a paragraph in business insurance, I'd expect. Which should raise the question, "as this can't be insured against, for us, what's our contingency".

fit2rule 6y ago

I have to say, my opinion of Elon Musk has lowered as a result of how he's handling this situation. If he can't get things sorted here on Earth with regards to a pandemic response, how is it going to work out in 10 years when he has a Mars colony to govern? Is there even any plan for how a Mars society is going to proceed in these conditions? I guess its time to dust off the ol' Zubrin material and catch up with where things are these days, vis a vis the human factors of a Mars colony, but the seriously feudal rants of Musk lately are disheartening to say the least ..

koonsolo 6y ago

I don't know if you are running your own business, but it's just so hard to take into account all kinds of possible risks. It's just impossible to work like that. Most of the time you gamble which resources to put where. Else you end up in analysis paralysis.

pbhjpbhj 6y ago
We're talking about very large businesses. Risk analysts should have been anticipating a pandemic given the several near-misses (Ebola, SARS, MERS, H1N1, ...) that we've had recently. If you're a large business that risk is going to be significant enough to consider. When I took family holiday insurance in early January, I had to check that pandemics were covered, and they were specifically mentioned. So I'd expect them to be a general part of risk analysis. A pandemic that's covered by insurance is a massive risk for an insurance company, so it's always going to be a paragraph in business insurance, I'd expect. Which should raise the question, "as this can't be insured against, for us, what's our contingency".