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Comment by contemporary343 | Hacker News Reader

I am curious how Tesla employees feel about this, and more generally Musk's continuous and baffling insistence that the coronavirus is no big deal. (Heck, it seems like until and unless this wipes out > 10% of humanity it seems like he'll keep saying 'no big deal')

It's one thing if your company and its CEO acknowledge the seriousness of the situation and develop a plausible contingency plan, including masks and random asymptomatic testing. But he seems rather unconcerned about such pedestrian matters and has decided it's a nothingburger and all hype.

Has Tesla actually proposed a reasonable plan to do this while Alameda county is seeing a spike in new cases?

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A decent CEO would've explained the precautions to local government officials, persuaded them it was the right thing to do and then kicked in a donation of 500,000 masks or something. Instead, Musk is tweeting conspiracy theories and going on Joe Rogan. It's just incompetence. Even if the Tesla factory does have real and effective measures to reduce the risks, no one is going to trust Elon Musk.

Seems to me like they do have a plan and experience that whatever measures they will take work based on the fact that they have been operating the Tesla China factory safely for months now. He has never said "don't take precautions" and assuming he means that is probably a mistake.

Edit: they have a 38 page plan on their website https://www.tesla.com/sites/default/files/blog_attachments/T...

Tesla just closed their Shanghai factory and is being evasive about why.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/07/tesla-reportedly-halts-car-p...

I don’t know anything about how Tesla is dealing with this in their factory, but nothing about Musk’s recent comments suggest rational consideration or cautious planning.

No they aren't it was closed for routine maintenance around a planned holiday, May 1-5 is labor day holiday in China, and they changed the reopening date by 3 days to allow for completion of maintenance on the line.

He does seem a little petulant. As soon as things don't go his way he stamps his little feet in anger.

But I guess that's part of why he's so successful, he just blasts through any kind of roadblock. Straight to the nuclear option.

If he really believes Corvig-19 is nothing then his actions make sense. But he's a smart guy, and he must understand it's dangerous... maybe he just doesn't care if people die? Or maybe Tesla succeeding and his cars end up saving more lives than a factory shutting down for a few weeks would?

It's an ugly side to him, that's for sure.

[edit] My neighbour works in ICU and we have few cases here. He has now caught Corvid-19 and is really ill. My neighbour is late 40's and is training for an iron man, so he's pretty darn fit. This is a dangerous bug, that's for sure.

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