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.