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Comment by jeffbee | Hacker News Reader

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I'm not sure what exactly you derived that from but it appears to cross into personal attack and that's not allowed here.

Also, please don't post in the flamewar style to HN, like this and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23148744. We're here for curious conversation and can't have both.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I live in Oakland and support Elon Musk's decision.

I also live in Oakland. I've lived in Alameda County for the past 8 years. I also paid 14k in real estate taxes last year to said county (I know that's small potatoes to some of my peers here but it's exorbitantly higher than most everywhere else).

I 100% support Elon here. The masterfulness of what he's doing is that over 10k employees are employed at that factory. If they can go to work - so can everyone else. He's essentially tossing a moltov cocktail at the whole house arrest bullshit.

Elon is a true patriot.

There are over a million jobs in Alameda County and what Tesla is doing here stands a high likelihood of causing an outbreak that detains the other 99% of us for longer than need have been, so that he can meet his looming performance targets and get paid $800 million.

High likelihood of causing an outbreak...? Not sure how you're reaching that conclusion. Their stated approach seems much safer and more conservative than any grocery or retail store currently IMO.

Grocery stores aren't open because of their extreme safety, they're open because of necessity. In fact they've been discussing closing grocery stores to the public too (and forcing pick-up etc.).

That doesn't disprove bavell's point.

Grocery stores are orders of magniutde less safe and orders of magnitude more frequented than Tesla factories. Let's be VERY conservative and propose that the factory is a mere 10× less risk than a supermarket. Let's assume that grocery stores are used by 100× more people than Tesla factory employees. That means grocery stores represent a 1,000× higher risk than Tesla's factory. And that's conservative.

But it's actually worse than that. If working at the Telsa factory reduces the frequency in which these employees must visit a supermarket (reduced use of store-bought toilet paper, reduced consumption of store-bought food) then its opening could arguably lower the overall risk profile.

I really don't think the situation is simple enough that you can rationalize a decision to it in 15 seconds.

Moot—I'm not the one making the decision.

I was just responding to arguments with other arguments. That's how an internet discussion works. If you say I was "rationalising" Tesla's decision to open the factory, you were equally "rationalising" the County's decision to keep it closed.

There's quite a difference between 10000 people who come together in the same place every day and then return elsewhere. Let's assume it is more like 3000 people on three shifts consistently. Then they all go home, shop at dozens of different grocery stores where the rest of us are trying to buy food, and so forth. It adds a lot of edges to the contact graph at the moment when we are trying to sever the edges we don't need.

Wait.... are you talking about grocery stores or factories? Facetiousness aside, your statement about thousand congregating and dispersing all over a community is true of grocery stores as well, with the added bonus of having a different mix everyday.

That said, I think you're right about severing all edges we don't need. No easy way out of this unfortunately...

You shop at your nearest grocer, or a nearby one, so the group mixing isn't that much. It's actually a fairly consistent group of people picking up eggs at the corner market. Tesla's autoworkers aren't paid enough to actually live in Fremont, so many of them are going to drive in from Stanislaus, Merced, and San Joaquin counties, creating exactly the kinds of long-distance links we don't want.

You live in a county with a democratically elected representative government. If you manage to convince most of your peers that you (and Musk) are right, you get to set the conditions of the health order by electing whoever you please. Otherwise, you have to deal with the democratic result, within the bounds of the US and CA Constitutions.

Why are you reading HN then, instead of a local Alameda County forum?

You might not care, but look at the COVID-19 statistics coming from New South Wales. I think they're entitled to have their perspective considered.

(Disclaimer: I also live in NSW and I wouldn't live anywhere in the USA even if you paid me a literal, tax-free million dollars.)

I live in the Bay Area and I support Elon's decision.

This is not a vote-based discussion. You have to support your point with facts/projections.

The county officials making these arbitrary rules and extensions are unelected, so they don't necessarily represent those living in the county either.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but they are appointed by electeds. They're part of an elected administration.

You should. Australia's had much better coronavirus outcomes than the US has:

https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

The US has a lot to learn from both Australia and New Zealand.

NSW ordered everybody to stay at home for 90 days except with a permit. Their lockdown is a lot more severe than ours, and they sealed their borders while we did not, and I don't credit being in the southern hemisphere as part of their policy, even though it has contributed a lot to their objective outcome.

Then learn from South Korea and Taiwan as well. Both northern hemisphere, both have better results than the US.

I don't think it's very useful to discuss the aggregate outcome in the USA. Fewer than 1% of US excess deaths have been in California, although 12% of Americans live here.

California has had worse outcomes than Australia, New Zealand, Taiwan, and South Korea:

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/usa/california/

It's a big state. See how small the number is for Alameda County?

By the way, I'm definitely not arguing with your conclusion. What we have to learn from Taiwan and Korea is that with a robust test and trace, we can go back to work. We just don't have it yet.

> See how small the number is for Alameda County?

Alameda County is worse per capita than Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, and Taiwan. It's also worse in absolute numbers than New Zealand and Taiwan.

>Those of us living in Alameda County don't really care if people from New South Wales support our pandemic defense posture or not

Is this a jab at all immigrants, or only some of us?

I'm pretty sure they just listed a place that's far away from Alameda County. Why do you think it has to do with immigrants?

The comment is not from an immigrant. It is from a person who presently resides in Australia.

This has got nothing to do with nothing but I find it funny that they named Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria and Tasmania, and then they stopped caring about naming states and just said that's West Australia, that's South Australia and that's North Australia.

Except when it’s unconstitutional. It’s almost certain that all of this won’t hold up in the supreme court.

There is actually a classic Supreme Court case upholding states’ right to interfere in business operations for the sake of public health.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compagnie_Francaise_de_Navigat...

Courts have repeatedly held quarantine regulations constitutional within recent years both during Ebola and COVID-19 related cases.

Never mind that health departments regularly shut down restaurants and food industry operations when food-borne disease outbreaks occur.

That case involved quarantine of individuals, not a generalized shutdown of almost all businesses.

I keep hearing people assert this, but never seem to provide a legal explanation of how it would work. My understanding is that the US has upheld the longstanding use of the police power to preserve health, safety, and the general welfare. I’m curious what you think the court’s rationale would be.

I guess I have a hard time believing either that the court would entertain the idea that the county has no legitimate interest in its residents’ welfare, that they would reject legal precedent older than the US constitution, or that they would take up a challenge based on a factual disagreement about epidemiology.

My mind is open to a reasoned legal argument!

It may suit public safety to indiscriminately handcuff every citizen, and we have the constitution to prevent that outcome. Confining everyone to their homes is hardly different in that regard.

Specifically the fourth amendment stipulates that the application of the law must well-justified, well-focused, and procedurally sound. In addition the first amendment guarantees freedom of assembly, which makes orders to disperse unsound.

How does a great depression level event benefit society ?

When you tell everyone to stay home its not an individual you are impacting. You are damaging the entire social structure to prevent damage to the social structure.

Is the cure worse than the disease ? Prove the disease is worse because you are supposed to have due process to remove rights.

This doesn’t really address my question. I’m not spoiling for an argument over what you think is the right course of action. I’m curious about why the court would second guess the decision making of the county.

Let’s for the sake of argument say I thought that the county’s decision were silly. Governments do things that some people think are silly all the time. Yet, the court intervenes only in very few specific cases, under a very carefully chosen set of circumstances.

Not a lawyer. Tesla competes with GM, Ford, etc. Tesla is not a local business. Tesla's primary trade is interstate commerce. Court may decide the county is unfairly restricting Tesla and giving an unfair advantage to competitors.

Also, while I've been happily self isolated for two months and plan to continue, I don't believe that many of these restrictions would be upheld if challenged in court.

Why can a Target stay open and sell non-essential merchandise while a competitor that doesn't also sell groceries can't? To be fair, Target and Wal-Mart would need to have ceased selling non-essentials.

But then the government is deciding what is and isn't an essential good...

Which is why I don't think it would/will hold up.

Thankfully, people with the jobs/means to stay home actually staying home has relieved some of the pressure, so restrictions can be lifted without actually causing everyone to rush to the bar or sports event.

The vast majority of auto-manufacturing isn't opening for another week. It's hard to believe he's at a disadvantage when Michigan hasn't opened their plants either.

But it does point out the fact we are doing damage to prevent damage.

The curves do intersect and likely already have

Be specific. What court case against public health officials could somebody today bring to court, successfully appeal all the way to the SC, and win? My guess is that the SC is going to look at our laws, the Constitution, and conclude that in the case of serious medical situations, the government has the right to limit the movement and speech of individuals and corporations, while still allowing for democratic processes to elect new officials who might enact more stringent or lenient laws within the constitutional framework.

I think you could get away with movement, but do you really thing restricting speech would hold up?

Beyond someone actively trying to get everyone to go outside at the same time and deliberately infecting people right now, I don't see what could pass the brandenburg test.

Imminent lawless action is a really high bar.

Interesting test of the bill of rights isnt it ?

Where is the balance ?

Individual not being able to work and feed his family vs some of society getting sick and those who had pre existing conditions sometimes dying.

How do you predict what is worse ?

If you read about the impact of the great depression it makes covid look rather trivial. Do we repeat the great depression and is that for the benefit of society as a whole ?

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