Tesla says it has health official's OK to run California plant
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The original timeline was always to reopen certain businesses May 18th, since the first extensions of the lockdowns were to expire on May 15th, and as demonstrated by the entire rest of the state opening up according to that schedule without anyone else throwing a tantrum.
Also, the county doesn't need to do anything to save face. They have nothing to prove. The elected officials can always say they were acting on the information of health experts, and the health experts can always point to the CDC, China, and even the re-emerging outbreaks in Wuhan, Italy, and Germany as reasons for not allowing Tesla to restart operations ahead of schedule and before Tesla had demonstrated they were willing to protect their workers.
As late as Sunday (today/yesterday), Alameda County hedged and did not give an specific date, only saying "early this week" (https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/05/17/sighs-of-relief-and-h...)
On Friday they said sometime next week (did not specify early or not) (https://www.kron4.com/news/contra-costa-alameda-counties-hol...).
May 8th, they said sometime mid-May (https://abc7news.com/when-california-is-going-to-reopen-stag...)
Finally, at the end of April, Alameda County (and the rest of the Bay Area) extended the lockdowns to expire May 31st, not May 15th, as you stated.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/05/17/coronavirus-new-cases...
33 cases today, region of 1.6M people.
Alemada County is alright by California standards, but is the worse performing Bay Area county (hospitalizations are flat for a month, rather than dropping like its neighbors). And 33 a day for 1.6m people is actually on the high side by northern California standards. (As a point of comparison, Santa Clara is at about 15 a day for 1.9 million)
It is kind of interesting that this conflict could be seen as mostly between city and county officials, but people love character and so Elon Musk becomes the only relevant player even though his only contribution has been to dare officials to have him arrested.
So, once again we see that most of public policy is about fantasy and narrative. Some businesses can open but not others which means basically everyone. City and county officials worked things out which means Musk has super powers and zero legal constraints.
Car demand is sure to plummet with a long economic depression coming, and electric cars moreso since the price of fuel is the lowest it's been for decades.
Considering that, if I were in Elons position, I'd prefer the state to be paying my employees salaries, and leave most of my factories closed. Keep the R&D department going so I have some awesome new products in a year's time when the economy starts recovering.
Until the upper middle class and up start losing jobs, Tesla will still have plenty of demand. Their core customer wasn’t line cooks.
Back orders/deposits are clogging up the system, thus affecting the total supply chain of deliverable cars. Model Y was not as popular in deposits as 3 was, that might have changed since I looked at the data, but also 3's line at Fremont is optimized for Y's output. Also, that's the only factory that make S/X/Y chassis for now. so its a bottleneck issue, too.
Essentially, this comes down to opportunity costs; people have paid, in part, for a car which if they choose to can/will always be refunded if they don't want it before taking delivery. Tesla would then have to not only give them their deposit back, but also have to figure out what to do with the chassis--taking on a net loss, but also assume liability for its inventory.
If Elon is right, Y is supposed to be their most popular chassis yet, so it'd probably just go to the next customer with the same specs. But still, my best guess is that this comes down to opportunity costs and unrealized gains--they have procured all the materials for assembly and its creating a backlog in production/vin assignment along with costly storage fees.
Which after the pain-staking processes with Model 3 ramp up, and optimization it has to be near unavoidable to want to learn and iterate as fast as possible to streamline the process to meet Global demand. I still can't figure out why the Gigafactory at Sparks isn't being used as an adjunct of their manufacturing, instead of just cramming ever-more of their entire inventory into Fremont.
I agree with Elon's position that most don't take the importance and difficulty of Manufacturing and its Supply Chain/Logistics very seriously at best and totally for granted and way too lightly at worst, because in reality it's a myriad of ever-changing cogs and gears all working in what may seem to the outsider as an effortless machine. It's like plumbing, if you've done it right most don't/won't even notice it until something goes catastrophically wrong: and then they're up in arms about having to deal with not getting fed because someone like Amazon is taking 3.5 weeks to deliver goods when it used to be same day.
I've always been impressed by his agility with ideas, zigging and zagging and I've been there cheering him on. But on this one it seems like he....went off the cliff, Wiley E. Coyote style.
Besides that, he's a contrarian. With COVID, we're faced with a situation where there is an extremely strong pressure to conform. There's one narrative being pushed and there's no real dialogue. Elon has a contrarian narrative: our basic human rights have been taken away (freedom of movement, etc) in the name of the greater collective good. He argues that people should be given the tools to help protect themselves but that the government should leave it up to individuals to decide how they manage this.
I tend to agree with him. We're told a vaccine could be two years away (or may never come). The fatality rate in my age group is about the same as the flu. I happen to be single, and at the moment, where I'm living, if I have a date with someone, I could technically be fined $1500 (and there have been a few reports of people going on tinder dates who have been). Since when has it been the government's business to legislate in these sorts of matters? I have been making efforts to socially isolate, but it's pushed me into a depression, I started taking antidepressants a month ago. I know two of my friends have done the same.
Weighing things like the lives of others vs a small disruption in your sex life seems right up government's (organized society's in general, even) alley.
Here we're talking about the mental health and wellbeing, the livelihood and life work (eg small businesses) of billions of people, being sacrificed in the hopes that this will save hundreds of thousands. You can argue that this is for the greater collective good, but how do you put a value on lives, or on everyone's mental health? For the sake of argument, how much is the lifespan of the average American due to job losses, foreclosures, bankruptcies, etc.? What kind of effect will isolation have on young children, who are being told that they can't play with other kids their age, during critical phases of their brain development?
I think it's perfectly fair to ask where we draw the line as to what is too much government control in the name of protecting the collective greater good. How much do you think your government should be allowed to control your life in the name of the greater good?
The previous paragraph had a more societally-oriented critique of lockdown measure, and the fact that the disruption has caused him and ostensibly two others so much distress as to seek prescribed medication in order to cope with it is far more salient within the latter paragraph, imo.
Your relativization of your fellow citizens as just a matter of numbers and "how old will they die anyways?" is absolutely heartless. These are actual people, with families, friends and close people. Not just numbers on the John Hopkins charts.
But hey, what could happen if you reopened ? After all, New York only had to deal with a shortage of medical equipment, medical personnel being exhausted and overworked, a need to bring cooling trucks just to hold the dead bodies. Combine that with the fact that the moment your health system gets overwhelmed and cannot treat other illnesses, those deaths will go through the roof. It's not a crazy theory. It's something epidemiologists have studied for a while, and we have seen its effect with cases in Europe, where deaths not related to Covid-19 have gone up, because we couldn't treat heart diseases, other pulmonary diseases, etc. Oh, and, an overwhelmed medical system also leads to a shutdown of other parts of your precious economy. People will not go to work because being injured means you cannot be treated. Half of construction gone. Half of any job that involves dangerous conditions gone. And how many other jobs will that destroy ? This lockdown is a necessary evil, and the best option we have.
So, yes. The government has every right to protect millions of citizens from dying. You can handle staying home. I know it's hard at times, and I truly hope that you will get better. But it's not complicated. Sit. at. home.
We don't know what the actual death rate is, we need more antibody studies to figure that out.
> "how old will they die anyways?"
I didn't say that, you did.
> These are actual people, with families, friends and close people.
Yes, and hundreds of millions of people with families, friends and loved ones are suffering in many ways because of the lockdown. I don't know how many depressions, foreclosures, broken marriages and boarded up small businesses one saved life is worth, but there's a tradeoff being made.
FWIW, I am staying home. I get my groceries delivered and leave the house about once or twice a week. I try to distance myself from people on the sidewalk, etc.
To start with, at least in my country (Canada), the narrative has never, ever been to 'stop transmission of the virus'. Ever. EG, the narrative has never been to 'stop people from getting it'.
(NOTE: I'm talking about responses from official government officials, not blather in blogs, media, etc)
The only point for the lockdown, was/is to slow down the transmission of the virus, so that hospitals would not be overwhelmed. In other words, as everyone, literally everyone catches it, that those which have a worst-outcome, have the best treatment possible.
That's it.
There's no attempt, or hope, or plan in the lockdown, to stop people from getting the virus. At all.
In this context, the lockdown is not to 'save lives', in the sense of 'people won't get it, and be safe'. So, when the hospitals aren't overwhelmed, when it has been shown that the virus isn't quite as deadly as thought to some, it is entirely logical, and sensible, to open up.
And to that end, it is entirely logical and sensible to insist people return to work. Because unless people become complete and total hermits for years, they'll get it...
One side note here.
I've done a bit of research, and two things stand out:
- Italy, hit bad - New York, hit bad - Montreal, certain sectors, hit bad
After a bit of research, I've concluded that one of the high-risk factors is sickle cell anemia. Something tha is VERY common in blacks from Africa, as it does help protect against malaria.
Yet guess what other population group is pre-dispositioned to it? Italians. Due to the Roman Empire's control of Africa.
https://www.sicklecellsociety.org/resource/sickle-cell-anemi... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7365760
Who has a large Italian, and Black population? New York. The sectors in Montreal hard hit.
Also note that the Italian population in New York is self reporting, so I suspect the numbers are higher (eg, grandpa was Italian, etc).
Hind sight is a wonderful thing, I would never chastise our governments for locking down, based upon what was happening in Italy. However, combine its aged population AND sickle cell anemia, and ho boy... no wonder!
Now transpose that to the average population in North America. Not quite the same.
Lastly, Ontario/Quebec... have repeatedly stated that there will be a 'second and third' wave. That even if things ebb and stop, soon as the fall comes? It will likely reappear.
I think ... I think it is logical to be concerned for one's safety, but I often look at our ancestors and compared, and I find us wanting. Pre-widespream vaccination (even in the 50s), before many vaccines had been developed, people would think us bananas worrying about all these deaths.
They'd put on masks maybe, but.. so many people died due to childhood and adult viruses.
Even the idea that falling off a ladder, could kill you simply because at one time antibiotics couldn't help if you had even small amounts of internal infection/bleeding. Sulfa drugs just didn't cut it.
Yet... compared to that lifestyle, we're insanely pampered.
But beyond all this? Unless we reopen, we'll all starve and die of other, massive issues.
Want food? You need 1000 little things, all produced by 1000s of industries. Parts for machines, additives, chemicals, transport, and all of that depending upon more and more of our infrastructure and production.
Try to trace, for example, a steel cog for a machine. Or, a chemical used.
You'll find dependencies on dozens of industries / other products, which all depend on OTHER products and industries, on and on. It's all interconnected.
That's how we operate, and there's on way around it.. because no matter what?
PEOPLE CURRENTLY HAVE TO WORK TO MAKE FOOD. Medicine. Houses.
Governments are opening up, because THEY HAVE NO CHOICE.
My elderly father lives with us. He worked in hospitals and during his heyday he had to deal with all sorts of contagious patients. His youth wouldn't have spared him from some of those diseases, but I don't think he worried too much about it.
But now he's 80 and ever since this pandemic started, there's only been fear-inducing news every day.
On one hand, there's the very real fact that the elderly are dropping like flies in Quebec due to poor management of retirement homes (which my dad saw coming years ago because he'd worked in those as well and the situation had only continued to degrade since he'd left).
But on the other hand, you've got all of these auxiliary news reports that only feel like negative reinforcement and has you solely focused on the virus as if it were the only threat out there now. And I think that messes with people's mind.
The day my dad stops being scared of the virus won't be the day the virus is gone, because that'll be in years, if ever. It'll be the day the news stop telling him to be scared.
But either way, my wife and I are fortunate enough to be able to work from home and minimize our outings for a while. I wouldn't expect everyone else to be able to do the same.
Your info is interesting. I'm in Luskville (just West of Gatineau, a quick 15 minute drive to Ottawa). I've been running my own consultant business for 20+ years, and mostly remote.
Like you and your wife, I am lucky. I still have my income, and in my case I live on a 1 acre rural lot. Almost nothing has changed in my life, even trips to my (remote) grocery store, at worst, tend to have a 2 minute wait to get in.
One thing here ; I don't have cable. I don't read Google News, or News websites. It's been... well, a decade since I've even seen more than a glimpse of a 24 hours news channel.
I've checked a few news websites, but I wonder how I'd be thinking, if I too was 80, probably not extremely mobile, bored, and watching some/a lot of news.
Maybe the real virus, is the News.
> We're talking about a "flu" that has, in a matter of weeks, completely overwhelmed every single health system in the world.
Many health care systems have been well below capacity throughout this. This includes most of the US (e.g. California), it includes places that have not shut down (Sweden), and it includes places that have reopened weeks ago (Georgia).
Despite these easily verifiable facts, many people believe as you do that health care systems are being overwhelmed everywhere. Maybe because the media is painting this picture by only focusing on the few places where this is actually happening.
This is hysteria.
It is blinding people from seeing the real, measurable damage wrought by the policies being enacted.
Sweden has been heavily criticized for its handling of the situation, and Europe is extremely wary of them right now. With good reason. The US does have the chance to be an extremely large country, so transmission is slightly less likely. California has not been overwhelmed through a mix of luck and, would you guess it, self quarantine.
>This is hysteria.
Pretending that doing nothing could not have catastrophic consequences is dangerous. Even with self quarantine (or imposed quarantine), this disease is the number one source of illness related deaths in the year in western countries. And this is only May.
Now, you write:
> Sweden has been heavily criticized for its handling of the situation
Yes, people have differing opinions. The fact is that Sweden is not an outlier in number of deaths despite keeping its economy essentially open. Perhaps this is what happens when you inform your citizens and then trust them to do the right thing?
> Pretending that doing nothing could not have catastrophic consequences is dangerous.
I agree, and I did not suggest that we should do nothing. But what are the optimal policies? Are the policies we have now optimal or can we do better? We need open and honest discussion to make progress on these questions.
I think this is enough to at least challenge the common viewpoint that restrictive lockdowns are the only way to deal with this.
I know the UK royally botched its coronavirus response (waiting until the virus was spreading far too quickly before doing anything at all), although I do not know about France and Italy.
I can only speak for myself, but with the lack of trustworthy information, I find it very difficult to draw any conclusions at all.
So that is an important starting point for a discussion: it is possible to keep things mostly open (with appropriate safety measures) without overwhelming the healthcare system.
Note that it is possible that Sweden’s approach will eventually lead to a comparable number of deaths as its neighbors, but at an accelerated rate. Namely, it is possible that people are getting infected at a higher rate, which explains the higher numbers, but that the mortality rate will eventually be the same because the healthcare system is not overwhelmed. This depends on when and if we will find a vaccine and better treatments, which is an unknown.
On the other side of the equation, there is no mass unemployment, no hours-long lines at food banks, people are not suffering from mental health problems due to isolation, and so on. If Sweden does end up paying a higher price for its policies, it will still enjoy these benefits. They decided that it is worth the trade off. They are trying to prevent covid victims while also trying to protect potential economic victims, whose suffering is not being ignored. Is that wrong?
[*] 88% of deaths in Sweden are people over 70, and I believe many of those were in nursing homes. So it is possible that fine-tuning the policy can significantly reduce the death rate while keeping things open.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1107913/number-of-corona...
All countries with higher deaths per capita than Sweden are significantly poorer, e.g. the UK has only 67% of Swedens GDP per capita, Spain has less than 50%.
Both France and Italy seem to be past the peak of this wave and have declining active cases, while the number of active cases are still growing in Sweden. I couldn't find the number of active cases for the UK.
I understand that the perception of the impact of the virus can be large, when seeing a new virus. But considering that those countries have extremely large average lifespan would tilt the numbers to make the perception of the statistics have larger impact than they are.
My comment was also that ICUs have been available for most of Europe - the hospital system was not overwhelmed at all for most of EU counties. If you take away the U.K., Italy, Spain, the rest of hospital infrastructure in EU remained under-utilised. This is good they remained under-utilised and it reveals that there are measures which can avoid a catastrophic event.
Total mortality is also already much higher in the EU than in the years before (Edit: Despite the lockdowns!).
You can make any claim, but be aware that claims not based on true facts are illogical and not constructive. There have been changes from the status quo to adhere to strict hygienic levels across large portion of the world. Find changes already applied across EU, USA, Asia, Africa, South Africa, etc.
In a circumstance where a person focuses on one area and disregards other areas fully, is a setup for failure. Focusing exclusively on this virus and disregarding everything else is not a recipe for a fulfilment.
But what it did not take into account was stopping the spread from getting into care homes, which is the most likely explanation for our bad numbers. Our elder care was, unlike our hospitals, entirely unprepared for a pandemic.
This is not hysteria it's the consequences of careful policy. Without that policy you may have seen healthcare systems crumble.
Y2K was precieved in hindsight as a media induce hiysteria without legitimacy because nothing bad happened.
But nothing bad happened because the entire industry took in seriously and did something about it. Geez...
However, see Sweden for a clear counter-example to your claim that the services are holding up because of the drastic actions taken. Their services are holding up with far less drastic measures.
Please review the data in conjunction with this statement. In ALL of Eastern Europe, the hospitals are essentially empty. Note that in ALL Scandinavian countries, there has always been additional allocated spare beds. I am not to downplay the risk. I note that there were shortages in London, Spain, Italy. But please review the absolute value of calling *every single health system in the world”.
Now
>Besides that, he's a contrarian. With COVID, we're faced with a situation where there is an extremely strong pressure to conform. There's one narrative being pushed and there's no real dialogue
This might be a European perspective, but what do you mean with "no dialogue"? Our media has been full with people pushing the viewpoint that we should reopen faster, that the economy should go before saving lifes, that "Sweden is doing fine". These were given a voice and then everyone else told them it's a stupid idea and get lost. There continues to be dialogue about this. People are challenging rulings, suing governments for damages etc.
Or maybe you mean that there hasn't been "the ability to do whatever you want without getting fined"?
Some specialists (and I mean heads of research/hospitals) were pretty much shut down by media in the beginning by suggesting that we should be wearing masks/avoid big gatherings, but still go outside and live a normal'ish life. They were shut down hard and talking parrots with 'stay home' replaced them.
But the stocks were so badly depleted there were not enough of them for critical workers...
Also, getting widespread compliance outside of Asia would have been hard before the lockdowns, when public figures left and right were minimizing the threat.
But instead, as usual, instead of being truthful to people, lies were said because of lack of supplies, which takes any kind of credence for future rules/advice as people will (rightfully) suspect of them.
I agree they lacked preparedness. They also reacted far too late ( the lockdown was postponed in France to hold local elections mid-March. From what I’ve heard all political parties were on board with that plan, even though the opposition is now using it against the govt.).
And well you should be, you selfish person. This is about keeping it from spreading to people who are in a high risk group. How hard is that to understand? Think for others, for a change, not just yourself.
You could be giving more money away and spending more time volunteering... But if you volunteered on top of your full-time job and gave all your money away, you might burn out, get into a depression, etc. There's some selfless sacrifices that you're not willing to make. Does that make you selfish? Is that bad?
So, if I got it right, you're saying that your sex life is something you can't temporarily sacrifice to slow the spread of a potentially fatal disease. You make me sick.
All the rest of your comments are just whataboutism. The world is full of moral wrongs, so your argument is that we should let it descend into a feeding frenzy. I shouldn't tell people they're acting selfishly if I've ever stepped on an ant. Completely absurd. Look in a mirror, bud.
- who is respecting isolation
- been in depression for a decade and have been in 8 or 9 sessions of counseling
Shut up! You are being so selfish that I can not imagine. The only reason I am not moving is because if I learn that I caused even one person to die by being asymptomatic - my life will completely derail.
I have killed exactly 1 cat under my running car once (8 years back) and I still remember that incident when I could not act fast enough, it brings me into tears sometimes even now.
The emotional burden will break my life into pieces. Depression my ass man, you have no clue what these mental issues are and to live with consequences.
Pretending to be psychologist for a second, I wonder if these people know it's wrong, but trying to make them selves feel better about it. Otherwise if you truly think you're in the right, why defend your self so intensely to so strangers online
It kind of blows my mind that it's come to this. But then again, I shouldn't be surprised given the last 5 years of outrage culture.
Looking at the history of the US, that seems about right.
Ok, but he was systematically minimizing threat constantly and all the time. When you purposefully feed people wrong information, latch yourself on every cherry-picked outlier study that everything is fine, you cant then turn around and say "it is all just about people making own decisions". That is just not true, because you are simultaneously manipulating people into decision that benefits you.
Also, Elon Musk did not advocate for setup where people who dont want to work keep unemployment benefits and people who do want to work can take their place either. None of that.
> Being forced to stay quarantined, to stop his life's work, probably drives him insane.
You know, when stay at home mom goes crazy after being suddenly all the time at home, she does not get that much of epical benefit of doubt. Seriously, some level of control over your emotional reaction could be expected from rich entrepreneurs too. And consequences are limited to husband and close family. Who typically tells her to stop the crap and she tries to figure out how to keep herself sane.
You are not the center of the world, to live in society we all make compromises all the time. childish egotistical tantrums are the number one cause for over regulation. If people would do their best and try and precieve situations from POV other than their own, most laws would be moot. It's the Trump and Elon of the world that make us have less freedoms, not the other way round.
1) Addresses criticisms of 'putting a pricetag on life'. To be fair comparing and giving value to ways of life and death is quite difficult, so any simple single measure can be unacceptable to any majority.
2) This approach takes into account already established acceptable trade-offs between economy and healthcare costs. Simply an extension of what we already do: we do not spend all our resources trying to save everyone from every malady, we make trade-offs (e.g. many patients don't receive expensive treatments that could save their lives because of lack of resources). The problem here is indeed how we measure it, you could argue this particular situation begs a more sophisticated approach that can be measured e.g. by QALY.
Neither line seem lead to easy conclusions of lockdown. I haven't analyzed any of them in depth (would require tons of research and experience I don't have), but I think both approaches indeed currently suggest no lockdown except for extreme situations and keeping measures like mild social distancing and using masks.
This calculus seems like something society could more or less agree upon and this would increase readiness for an eventual next crisis too, without destroying our economy or delaying necessary measures due to controversy. I truly believe either epidemiologists (which were the main consultants), health care professionals, politicians or economists alone didn't have the necessary expertise to tackle this. A wide interdisciplinary approach is necessary (which we weren't ready for).
For all that you need information, which takes time. So we've spent some time, gotten some more information, and now we can make (more) informed decisions.
Not like he had much choice. Some other car factories reopened May 4, so Tesla was being held back vs. their competition, which is why he was tweeting about going to a different state.
I'm sorry that most people forget this, but we didn't lock down our societies and place our economies on life support because people might die. We did it because it was absolutely critical that we didn't allow our hospital systems to be overwhelmed. We needed to flatten the curve. And we succeeded.
Again, it was to flatten the curve, not because there was a greater-than-zero risk of death. But at some point between then and now, the narrative hs changed to talk about keeping people safe at any cost.
At the same time we need to balance economic well-being, as having the economy shut down can destroy people too. We can remain as cautious as possible with high risk areas (e.g. public transport, cinemas, live sports, festivals, nightclubs) while moving rapidly to restore economic activity where risk is low.
Perhaps the most obvious example of a low risk / high economic impact situation would be highly robotised manufacturing which can easily enforce PPE use and limit shared touch-points. While a Tesla car factory is not a zero-risk environment, it's still a much lower risk than visiting the local supermarket which would have far more people and far less compliance around distancing and PPE.
> Kids are essentially immune, but elderly with existing conditions are vulnerable. Family gatherings with close contact between kids & grandparents probably most risky.
That's just an outright false statement.
And just an "Actually" on the rest of your comment, we all know about flattening the curve and people are pretty sick and tired of hearing about how this is all really just flattening the curve. We know. Public health officials know. You don't need to tell us, the lockdowns were openly stated as flattening the curve from the beginning as were the plans for reopening. Plans that according to Elon Musk are fascism, a man who operates factories in the US and China and decided the US is the one that has a fascist government.
He is also a man that was in mid-March, convinced, and was shouting at anyone who would listen, that cases in the US would somehow drop to essentially zero in April.
I'm not sure that his primary motivation is laying out logical, well-thought-out, sensible arguments about the situation. I do think that his primary motivation may have something to do with keeping his factories running, and that he will say whatever it takes to get to that point.
I was only defending the reopening of highly robotised manufacturing, not how Elon has comported himself in public.
The Tesla California plant has a very bad record when it comes to safety issues. California helped Tesla by looking the other way because they knew the company was starting and that they are very valuable for California.
And then Elon called them fascist because he could not open up the factory due to the virus. Of course officials then would like to approve the safety standards before opening up the factory again.
On the other hand nothing is going on here. The county already wanted to open up the businesses.
Elon lost a lot respect in all this. Maybe he has a lot on his mind like becoming a father again, the virus, selling all his properties, wanting to go to mars earlier than possible, his brain implant project, and so on. To me he sounds a little exhausted. In the latest Joe Rogan he also looks very tired and dim.
Can you actually provide solid evidence about actual people harmed that shows that Tesla is unsafer then any similar plants in the US?
> Elon lost a lot respect in all this.
With some people he gained a lot of respect. Seems like you are just applying your own option and that of people you know and believe this is societies opinion.
"I don't know anybody who voted for Nixon".
If Musk isn't right there on the factory line among the workers and endangering his life along with the workers that he is forcing to come work for him, then I will lose a tremendous amount of respect for him. If anything, this should be a good opportunity for the factory workers to unionize and demand better treatment.
If you look you'll see this behavior across a wide range of issues.
It's always hard to explain, and then after explaining the probability stuff ... you get to explain that it is the probability ... that we know of.
For anyone who wants hard facts on COVID-19... science will tell us in 2 or 3 years I suspect.
There was no outrage about other factories because most US factories use more automation than Tesla and workers are generally spaced more than 6 feet apart at "stations" on the assembly line. (See, e.g., the General Mills factories where cereal is made, any other US automaker, etc.)
Bullshit. You are confusing different activities that involve not getting paid.
Not showing up for work, the person doesn't get paid, and contrary to your claim (there are no such "multiple reports" unless you are counting reddit comments?) Tesla is being nice and not firing them, but instead putting them on unpaid leave so their job is actually held open for a while. Not even the same ballpark as fired.
Yes there are consequences for unemployment since their job is available to them should they want to do it. This is by law, not Tesla's doing. They aren't terminated by the way… another word for fired… just on unpaid leave, again.
>workers are generally spaced more than 6 feet apart
That's also the case at the Fremont factory.
Except it was illegal for Tesla to be opening up early against health department orders, so it seems likely that the law would actually be on the employee’s side. Terminating an employee for refusing to violate lawful government orders is illegal.
Of course, non-unionized factory workers at Tesla may very well not have a lawyer on retainer to consult about this and might feel forced by Tesla’s unlawful threat to go in anyway...
No, I'm not. Every media article on this, including by Teslerati and other pro-Tesla sites is unanimous on this point.
Not showing up for work, the person doesn't get paid, and contrary to your claim (there are no such "multiple reports" unless you are counting reddit comments?) Tesla is being nice and not firing them, but instead putting them on unpaid leave so their job is actually held open for a while. Not even the same ballpark as fired.
Only someone in Silicon Valley could think that being put on unpaid leave is somehow "being nice" to the employee. Many people live paycheck to paycheck. Also, Tesla wasn't being nice--they were following labor law. If they had terminated those employees without sufficient notice they would have violated state and federal WARN Acts.
This is by law, not Tesla's doing. They aren't terminated by the way… another word for fired… just on unpaid leave, again.
This is false. Tesla asserted that it would challenge any employee's claim that the termination was COVID-related, when the whole reason the factory was shut down was due to COVID restrictions. This is a heinous violation.
That's also the case at the Fremont factory.
This is also false. Employees in the Fremont factory work within 6 feet of each other at multiple stations when the factory is operational. At many stations on their lines, they literally work side-by-side as if they were in a meat-packing plant.
In the long term, you can't subvert the fundamental fact that the economy is what allows people to obtain goods and services. If a country cuts production in half for a year, it won't be able to provide the standard of living to which its citizens are accustomed, no matter what financial wizardry is involved.
So that crowded bus for hours thing, not sure where that came from.
Shopping takes less time that working, for sure, but that's missing the point, because the environment at a store is much dirtier. The Tesla plant is pretty clean and you don't have random people wandering in off the streets touching everything.
> My employer furloughed me when its business closed due to the COVID-19 stay-at- home order. I am currently receiving regular UI benefits. My employer is reopening and has asked me to return to work. Will I lose my regular UI benefits if I refuse to return to work because I am afraid of contracting COVID-19 in the workplace?
> An individual is disqualified for UI if they refuse to accept “suitable” employment when offered. Under California law, the EDD will consider whether the particular work is “suitable” in light of factors such as the degree of risk involved to the individual’s health and safety. For example, if your employer has complied with the state’s requirements for reopening, and any and all government safety regulations, you may not have good cause to refuse to return to work and could be disqualified from continuing to receive regular UI benefits for a designated period of time.
Whether you lose your unemployment comes down entirely to whether the government of California deems the working conditions suitable, Tesla’s judgement “suitable” does not enter into the equation in any way whatsoever. Elsewhere in the FAQ they also specifically state that your own individual risk factors are taken into account when making this judgement. If you have an issue with people choosing between unemployment or unsafe working conditions, that issue lies exclusively with the state.
The more important question is: how do you even justify forcing workers to make the choice?
And, again, I ask you: how do you justify asking workers to make the choice between health and safety or having income to support their families? You literally ignored every point in my comment.
Again, how do you justify forcing that choice on someone? I think by now it's clear that you're simply trying to weasel out of answering that.
You are asserting that CA EDD is in fact not following this policy. You have not provided any actual concrete claims to support this. You have not described a single way in which the standards of the CA EDD are insufficient, or a single instance of their delinquency in following this policy. As far as I can tell, you believe the CA EDD to be delinquent as some sort of perfectly obvious self-evident truth. Which leads me to believe that you in fact do not have any specific criticism to offer at all, and that you have absolutely nothing to offer a conversation on this topic.
> They're being told "you have to go back to work, regardless of whether you think it's safe, because we, the state, think it is."
Now, how do you justify the state telling people what is and is not safe for them to return to work?
Your question is actually "how does the state justify setting minimum safety standards for work places?", because your criticism applies to any and all scenarios where they choose to do so. Most people would agree that minimum safety standards should be defined, and that the state is usually the best party to handle that. But what if people think the state hasn't done a good enough job? Well people are entitled to think anything they like, for any reason at all. Some people think that the state is delinquent in allowing for coronavirus-causing 5G cell towers to be built. Just because somebody thinks something, doesn't mean it has any merit. For somebody's thoughts to be taken seriously, they are usually expected to provide some sort of rational basis for having them. So far you have provided no basis at all, rational or otherwise, for believing that the CA EDD has failed to make reasonable judgements about workplace safety in relation to COVID-19. If you're not capable of doing that, then your assertion that people are being forced to choose between receiving unemployment benefits and their own personal safety, is completely without merit.
10 in 100,000 risk of death ranks with the 20th most deadly occupation in the US: https://www.businessinsider.com/the-most-dangerous-jobs-in-a...
This is not about "minimum workplace standards," this is about people who are now subjected to significantly more danger simply by going to work. Based on the list in the article, it would make anyone's job at least 10-200% more dangerous.
So, again, how do you justify that? Keep in mind, these are not workers who signed up for the 21st most deadly occupation in the US. Please try to actually answer the question rather than weasel out of it.
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[0]: 1% cumulative chance of getting the disease in the next year. Also, 1% fatality rate is an approximation. Let's not quibble about the actual number. We've already lost far more than 10 in 100,000 Americans to this disease. The fact is, COVID-19 makes going to work vastly more dangerous than it was 5 months ago.
Your entire premise is that the standards used by the CA EDD are not sufficient, and that you speculate they're going to increase COVID fatalities by more than an order of magnitude. Yet you can not provide a single reason to justify any of this speculation.
Again, you seem to be saying the state has this right, and I would like you to justify that belief. Or, would you rather waste more words trying to weasel away from the question?
The state of California did not create COVID-19, and it’s not responsible for ensuring that you live your life free from the risk of personal harm. Aside from being an entirely impossible task, it has never been the role of government to reduce your risk of harm to zero. The role of government in this context is generally agreed to be setting minimum standards. The state of California decided those standards could not be met when the outbreak began, and required large numbers of people to remain at home. Those people were entitled to unemployment benefits. It has now decided that in some circumstances it is safe to return to work. If it is safe for you to return to work, according to the standards set by the CA EDD, and you have a place of work to return to, your choice is to return to a safe place of work, or sacrifice your entitlement to unemployment benefits. If you do not have a safe place of work to return to, you don’t have to make any decision at all.
If you believe that people are being forced to return to unsafe working environments, then state your case. Because so far the only case you’ve put forward to support that theory is statistics that you literally just made up.
There is even risks from being born, but we still encourage it.
With COVID-19 out of control, I am saying that the state has no right to force workers back to jobs that are now 3x as dangerous as they were 5 months ago.
As for risk of being born, we should not encourage that, because the unborn cannot consent to being born, but thank you for playing.
I'm just not sure what you mean when you talk about the state having a right. COVID-19 isn't expected to go away entirely for a long time, and California doesn't have enough money to give everyone paid leave for the next year. Workers can't be paid money that doesn't exist, even if they have a right to be paid.
Oh, so we've met criteria for a full reopening? I can stop wearing my mask? That's news to me.
As for the state "having money," do you think they have literal vaults of cash that's in finite supply, or something? The federal government should be subsidizing the health of employees in this case, and they can do it by incrementing numbers in a computer. It's that simple.
Masks are going to be a part of our lives for a while, most likely for the next year or two. If you expect a full reopening to mean no masks, you should recalibrate your expectations.
In other words, you made it up, and put quote marks around it. That's not a super great way of conducting a conversation. OK.
Even so, I think the state should have the power to make that determination, if it's being asked to hand you a check.
But they consider factors like family risk and childcare needs, and they have interviews to go over details of specific cases.
So I think you're too easily making up stuff here and not grasping what the real facts are.
Glad to know you think the state has a right to make my job 3x as dangerous, because "fuck me," right? Circumstances aside, you're literally saying the state has a right to send some people into the line of fire for the sake of what? Capitalism? The economy?
If an individual has particular safety or health issues regarding returning to the workplace, then their unemployment is not affected.
So they don't have to make the choice you are saying they have to make.
Also, to be fair, their approach seems to be in accordance with the law as workers that do not return should be reported to unemployment boards, from my understanding.
Not arguing if it’s right or wrong.
https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-thank-you-note-tes...
1. Producing masks, gloves, face shields
2. Producing tests or test supplies (cotton swabs, reagents, etc.)
3. Things related to contact tracing (not sure what material goods this would need off-hand)
4. Vaccine research (again, nothing they could do)
The choice is not between re-open now or never re-open. If we actually had at least the first 3 things above, re-opening could be done in a controlled and safe manner. We still don't have those things, months later.
Unfortunately, Alameda County doesn't publish daily test counts or anything, so the best citation I have for you is a random news article[1] asserting they're 1/3 of the way to 3100 tests per day.
[1] https://www.kqed.org/science/1963889/coronavirus-some-bay-ar...
That way it could also move quicker if things actually do turn worse. Since there are plenty of examples already of states and regions opening up without any consequences.
I think you’ve nailed it. The virtuous and vocal “stay home save lives” crowd invariably has almost no skin in the game. They get their food delivered to them (sucks for those folks) and their livelihood is secured.
The rest of us are left to fend for ourselves.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/05/class-war-...
Of course we need to open, but right now (May) is not that time. If I had to guess (which is irrelevant to a data driven approach) I would assume late June or July would be safer.
Things are going to turn around again of course. Sooner or later reality is going to hit when the handouts stop and the food supply dries up. Humanity isn’t going to survive by doing nothing and the people who put in the work and take the risks now have to be incentivized or they may quit working as well.
I don't have a job at the moment, I'm trapped in another state, and I started a non profit to distribute hand sanitizer for free in that community -- BECAUSE IT IS STILL NOT AVAILABLE TO EASILY PURCHASE. The Purell factory is literally 10 miles away, and yet we are not where we need to be.
I realize that it totally sucks that we need to do these things in order to safely resume normal society. Wouldn't it be great if we had spent the last 2 months making steady progress on those goals?
You know in the US far too many people are obsessed with going to work even if sick, because they don't get paid otherwise. This needs to change.
The only difference is that Alameda County opposed the factory reopening. Not the city of Fremont, not the state of California, not the federal government. It was the county that held its reopening up.
The state gave discretion to the county and the county was enforcing a standard that Elon didn’t want to follow, or else wanted to stage a scene to justify his inevitable relocation to a state with cheaper labor. Now we’re back to the original county schedule.
Not even recommended guidance, just advisory. AKA "Here's a one size fits all list we expect you to tailor to your particular situation."
Never mind that “federal guidelines” have no legal relevance to county or state health orders. The US constitution leaves police power, including quarantine orders, to the discretion of the states.
Health workers are literally hands on infected people coughing in their face. They also have infected people literally delivered to them. It’s apples and oranges.
This is a meat packing plant: https://postmediacalgaryherald2.files.wordpress.com/2020/03/... Shoulder to shoulder all day long. Those are their stations for their entire shift.
Notice also: no masks. And because they've been deemed a critical industry, they aren't necessarily getting masks now either. So no distancing, and no masks. These are also very poorly paid jobs, and it would be unusual if they had health insurance or paid time off.
It's pretty much the perfect conditions for covid.
Cars tend to be a bit bigger than chickens.. so in a car factory, the workers are usually more than 6 ft apart.
All the images I've seen are dominated by large robotic arms with people sparsely sprinkled throughout.
Every day and every part of life, we balance safety with living life. Public health is no different: it is a balance, not an extremist view that we must eradicate COVID at all costs.
We cannot shut down non-essential until there's a vaccine. That's just not possible. All work is essential, and public governments can't print money forever (without hyperinflation).