Hacker News Reader

Comment by flyGuyOnTheSly | Hacker News Reader

>A starting point would be Amazon providing tests and ensuring that everyone has been tested before returning to work

Amazon can't win.

If they did that, the newspaper headlines would read "Bezos demands DNA samples of workers as a prerequisite to being paid."

View on HN

I don't know about that, but there'd definitely be newspaper headlines about the number of workers testing positive implying that it's somehow Amazon's fault. We've already seen this with one of Amazon's NYC warehouses (over numbers that seem very much in line with NYC in general), various food manufacturers, etc. Apparently some meat-packing companies are now reluctant to test any of their workers because of the bad publicity and the damage it does - they'd rather just close down the entire site.

COVID tests aren't DNA tests. It's a swab of the back of your throat (through the nose, oof) to test for a specific virus. It's not hard to find the specific stuff used to perform the tests, it's out there on the internet, the CDC published it. Are we really descending into paranoia about Amazon trying to genetically profile employees?

There's a big population of people who just start from the premise that Amazon must be doing something wrong and search for facts to justify it. I lost my ability to assume good faith when people complained they should pay $15 an hour, they started paying $15 an hour, and then the controversy immediately restarted about how greedy they are to not pay more.

Never mind the fact that Amazon does 401(k) matching and provides its warehouse workers the same group health insurance plan as their software engineers, which might possibly be the most generous health insurance plan for an entry-level position that requires no college degree.

I'm pretty sure they could start paying a minimum wage of $30 an hour and people would be irate that they're making it impossible to hire anyone because Amazon is overpaying. When you're the biggest player there is nowhere to hide.

This probably won't be too far off, if the current level of unemployment benefits holds. Just the $600 a week on top of state benefits comes out to $15/hr.

I'm right there with you... I don't like Trump, even if I agree on a lot of policy actions/choices, but the guy can't have a good day with a lot of people. So many are outright lying to push an agenda over truth, and you can't really rely on anyone to be informed anymore.

Right now, I'm much more concerned that we're on the brink of war with China and Iran... partly because China sees us as weakened over COVID, I'm not sure on Iran's motivations right now either... With how much of our tech comes from taiwan, it's really concerning... this could literally set the world back a decade for a decade.

It's always interesting seeing a comment go up as high as a three and as low as -1, back and forth.

Oh no! He said something not negative about Trump... downvote now!

> COVID tests aren't DNA tests.

Correct, because SARS-CoV-2 is an RNA virus and contains no DNA. But the test does work by detecting the viral RNA and it is hard to find the specific stuff (reagents) to perform the test and that's a big reason why we're all sheltering in place without a proper nationwide testing regime.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com