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I'm not sure if this is a surprise to anyone when the CEO of Tesla has made it very clear that he doesn't believe the threat of COVID-19 is real and that a mand

I'm not sure if this is a surprise to anyone when the CEO of Tesla has made it very clear that he doesn't believe the threat of COVID-19 is real and that a mandated quarantine is fascism. Couple that with the factory conditions that have been reported by workers previously and the result is this.

sjwright 6y ago
The result is this? A scandal this obvious? This predictable? A scandal this trivially avoidable? Is incompetent goonishness really more likely than an HR department screwing up 0.02% of the time while managing ten thousand individuals making ten thousand individual decisions with regards to their response to a pandemic?
deleted 6y ago
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skellington 6y ago
No, he has said that he believes the threat of COVID does not warrant the extreme response of mandated lockdowns. That's a lot different than saying there is no threat. Every day, people make decisions around risk and people can have wildly different opinions on how much risk to accept in order to live.
- FireBeyond 6y ago
  And he has made that decision on behalf of his employees, too, not just himself. He is deciding how much risk that they need to be willing to take.
  - skellington 6y ago
    Well, without employees showing up there is no more Tesla. So each employee should be able to make the choice to take a very small risk and go to work or to live in irrational fear and quit their job. The only mistake Tesla made was saying they didn't have to come if they were afraid. They should have just made it clear, come to work or be fired. I guess by your logic, CEOs of banks, supermarkets, food processing, farmers, truckers, utility workers, insurance companies, hardware stores, airlines, hotels, hospital workers, etc. are all evil because they are 'forcing' their employees to work too. But I'm sure that your response (in spirit) will be "The only essential businesses that should be allowed to force people to work are the ones THAT I NEED. I don't need a Tesla so it's not an essential business and we can just let it go out of business and layoff 50K people."
    - ilikehurdles 6y ago
      > The only mistake Tesla made was saying they didn't have to come if they were afraid. They should have just made it clear, come to work or be fired. You call it a "mistake". I call it lying. It wasn't an accident or a run of the mill bad phrasing, it was trying to placate the government and the press with one message while punishing everyone who didn't read between the lines of it. And you're right about there not being a Tesla without employees showing up. That's why Elon fires anyone who he suspects recognizes the power of a strike.
      - skellington 6y ago
        You say potato, I say politics. What startup company could survive unionization and striking workers?
        AlexandrB 6y ago
        One whose competitive advantage is due to tehcnological innovation and not circumventing labor laws. Or was that rhetorical?
        timmytokyo 6y ago
        Oh, I dunno, maybe a company that doesn't exploit and abuse its workers.
        FireBeyond 6y ago
        Tesla was formed nearly 20 years ago and has a market cap of $190B. It is not in any way, shape or form, a "startup".
    - AlexandrB 6y ago
      > So each employee should be able to make the choice to take a very small risk and go to work or to live in irrational fear and quit their job. I get the feeling that this will not age well[1]. [1] https://update.covid19.ca.gov/#top https://update.covid19.ca.gov/#top
    - FireBeyond 6y ago
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- cryptoz 6y ago
  Elon is nearly criminally bad at risk management, then. He claimed that based on 'current trends' (in March?), the US would have close to 0 new virus cases per day by the end of April. I have no idea what trends he was looking at, because there was no public evidence of a declining US case count at the time he was referencing. I don't think the US ever got much below 20,000 new cases per day, at any point since we rose to those levels in the first place. > That's a lot different than saying there is no threat. He has downplayed the threat so significantly and in such frequent error - proved as error as time passes and his virus predictions do not come to pass - that he is effectively suggesting that indeed, "there is no threat" even if he does not use those direct words.
  - skellington 6y ago
    That was based on China's super aggressive approach to COVID management. I agree, he didn't take into account how s--- the US would be at managing COVID. But also, you can't be against lockdowns and then be surprised at viral spread continuing. The ONLY way the US would have minimized COVID death was hyper-aggressive contact tracing. That didn't happen and still continues to not happen, so COVID will not be controlled and by the time any vaccine is developed we will reach herd immunity anyway so it won't matter. The math says (and has always said) that the US will need to reach 400K-600K deaths before herd immunity is reached. And there is NOTHING that can change that number given the current state of COVID management. The recent protests/riots plus various easing measures guarantee another exponential spike in cases. The vaccine won't happen in time to make a big dent in the numbers. Novel treatments (remdesivir, etc.) that reduce mortality can make a difference, but it's unclear how much of a difference and when. It's unclear if masks and social distancing while largely re-opening the economy can keep R0 below one. So far it doesn't look like it, but we don't have enough data.
    - cryptoz 6y ago
      > That was based on China's super aggressive approach to COVID management Elon made specific predictions about the US. If he was using China's data to make predictions about US laws and American behavior, then I repeat and stand by my words that Musk is therefore extremely bad at risk management. China and the US are extremely different countries. There is no logic to basing American response predictions on China's actions; it is obviously flawed to the point of not being useful and also being harmful.
- patentatt 6y ago
  With communicable diseases, your risk taking implicates those around you. Your rights end where other's begin, and people around you have a right to not be exposed to a life-threatening illness.
  - fastball 6y ago
    Maybe people in the US should actually start wearing facemasks then.
    - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
      The vast majority of people in the US do.
      - skellington 6y ago
        I am in favor of masks, but it's not clear if they are effective. If they don't reduce R0 to less than one, then they are just prolonging the inevitable.
      - svaha1728 6y ago
        Maybe in California. Certainly not in the Midwest. I would say here in Kansas/Missouri we are at about 10%
  - skellington 6y ago
    That's wildly simplistic. There are many other deadly communicable diseases than just COVID, like the average flu for example. COVID is worse than the average flu, but not radically worse by SUBJECTIVE OPINION. Why exactly is COVID the HARD LINE for you while the flu is totally ok? Do you not see there is a very large grey zone between: [the regular flu] <---> [hypothetical plaque that kills 50% of everyone] [totally accepted, [totally rejected, society doesn't do society implements anything] extreme measures] As we head towards the right side of the grey zone, you would get very high consensus that extreme measures are worth it. But COVID is much closer to the left side of the grey zone which is why we see much less consensus.

sjwright 6y ago

The result is this? A scandal this obvious? This predictable? A scandal this trivially avoidable? Is incompetent goonishness really more likely than an HR department screwing up 0.02% of the time while managing ten thousand individuals making ten thousand individual decisions with regards to their response to a pandemic?

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

skellington 6y ago

No, he has said that he believes the threat of COVID does not warrant the extreme response of mandated lockdowns. That's a lot different than saying there is no threat. Every day, people make decisions around risk and people can have wildly different opinions on how much risk to accept in order to live.

FireBeyond 6y ago
And he has made that decision on behalf of his employees, too, not just himself. He is deciding how much risk that they need to be willing to take.
- skellington 6y ago
  Well, without employees showing up there is no more Tesla. So each employee should be able to make the choice to take a very small risk and go to work or to live in irrational fear and quit their job. The only mistake Tesla made was saying they didn't have to come if they were afraid. They should have just made it clear, come to work or be fired. I guess by your logic, CEOs of banks, supermarkets, food processing, farmers, truckers, utility workers, insurance companies, hardware stores, airlines, hotels, hospital workers, etc. are all evil because they are 'forcing' their employees to work too. But I'm sure that your response (in spirit) will be "The only essential businesses that should be allowed to force people to work are the ones THAT I NEED. I don't need a Tesla so it's not an essential business and we can just let it go out of business and layoff 50K people."
  - ilikehurdles 6y ago
    > The only mistake Tesla made was saying they didn't have to come if they were afraid. They should have just made it clear, come to work or be fired. You call it a "mistake". I call it lying. It wasn't an accident or a run of the mill bad phrasing, it was trying to placate the government and the press with one message while punishing everyone who didn't read between the lines of it. And you're right about there not being a Tesla without employees showing up. That's why Elon fires anyone who he suspects recognizes the power of a strike.
    - skellington 6y ago
      You say potato, I say politics. What startup company could survive unionization and striking workers?
      - AlexandrB 6y ago
        One whose competitive advantage is due to tehcnological innovation and not circumventing labor laws. Or was that rhetorical?
      - timmytokyo 6y ago
        Oh, I dunno, maybe a company that doesn't exploit and abuse its workers.
      - FireBeyond 6y ago
        Tesla was formed nearly 20 years ago and has a market cap of $190B. It is not in any way, shape or form, a "startup".
  - AlexandrB 6y ago
    > So each employee should be able to make the choice to take a very small risk and go to work or to live in irrational fear and quit their job. I get the feeling that this will not age well[1]. [1] https://update.covid19.ca.gov/#top https://update.covid19.ca.gov/#top
  - FireBeyond 6y ago
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
cryptoz 6y ago
Elon is nearly criminally bad at risk management, then. He claimed that based on 'current trends' (in March?), the US would have close to 0 new virus cases per day by the end of April. I have no idea what trends he was looking at, because there was no public evidence of a declining US case count at the time he was referencing. I don't think the US ever got much below 20,000 new cases per day, at any point since we rose to those levels in the first place. > That's a lot different than saying there is no threat. He has downplayed the threat so significantly and in such frequent error - proved as error as time passes and his virus predictions do not come to pass - that he is effectively suggesting that indeed, "there is no threat" even if he does not use those direct words.
- skellington 6y ago
  That was based on China's super aggressive approach to COVID management. I agree, he didn't take into account how s--- the US would be at managing COVID. But also, you can't be against lockdowns and then be surprised at viral spread continuing. The ONLY way the US would have minimized COVID death was hyper-aggressive contact tracing. That didn't happen and still continues to not happen, so COVID will not be controlled and by the time any vaccine is developed we will reach herd immunity anyway so it won't matter. The math says (and has always said) that the US will need to reach 400K-600K deaths before herd immunity is reached. And there is NOTHING that can change that number given the current state of COVID management. The recent protests/riots plus various easing measures guarantee another exponential spike in cases. The vaccine won't happen in time to make a big dent in the numbers. Novel treatments (remdesivir, etc.) that reduce mortality can make a difference, but it's unclear how much of a difference and when. It's unclear if masks and social distancing while largely re-opening the economy can keep R0 below one. So far it doesn't look like it, but we don't have enough data.
  - cryptoz 6y ago
    > That was based on China's super aggressive approach to COVID management Elon made specific predictions about the US. If he was using China's data to make predictions about US laws and American behavior, then I repeat and stand by my words that Musk is therefore extremely bad at risk management. China and the US are extremely different countries. There is no logic to basing American response predictions on China's actions; it is obviously flawed to the point of not being useful and also being harmful.
patentatt 6y ago
With communicable diseases, your risk taking implicates those around you. Your rights end where other's begin, and people around you have a right to not be exposed to a life-threatening illness.
- fastball 6y ago
  Maybe people in the US should actually start wearing facemasks then.
  - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
    The vast majority of people in the US do.
    - skellington 6y ago
      I am in favor of masks, but it's not clear if they are effective. If they don't reduce R0 to less than one, then they are just prolonging the inevitable.
    - svaha1728 6y ago
      Maybe in California. Certainly not in the Midwest. I would say here in Kansas/Missouri we are at about 10%
- skellington 6y ago
  That's wildly simplistic. There are many other deadly communicable diseases than just COVID, like the average flu for example. COVID is worse than the average flu, but not radically worse by SUBJECTIVE OPINION. Why exactly is COVID the HARD LINE for you while the flu is totally ok? Do you not see there is a very large grey zone between: [the regular flu] <---> [hypothetical plaque that kills 50% of everyone] [totally accepted, [totally rejected, society doesn't do society implements anything] extreme measures] As we head towards the right side of the grey zone, you would get very high consensus that extreme measures are worth it. But COVID is much closer to the left side of the grey zone which is why we see much less consensus.