Hacker News Reader

Comment by Google234 | Hacker News Reader

I’m curious if you think Tesla should still be closed now?

to the point that any business should be. as in, if they take reasonable precautions I am all for any business being opened. it is far easier to contain the issue in a factory floor than the supermarket many will be in on their way home.

that is the lunacy of the closings, they lack logic, as in rules being used and implied risk against other types of businesses opening have been glossed over for those already deemed essential.

> that is the lunacy of the closings, they lack logic, as in rules being used and implied risk against other types of businesses opening have been glossed over for those already deemed essential.

Musk was one of the few business owners to seriously push back against local authorities who made unjustifiable restrictions. More people would be grateful to him for doing that if he wasn't so ridiculous in other aspects of his public life.

> if they take reasonable precautions

Who decides what's reasonable? To me, "reasonable" might mean, "precautions that minimize unnecessary risk to human morbidity and mortality". Even if we were to agree on this, what do "minimize" and "unnecessary" mean? And how do we take into account second-order effects, like, maybe my workplace is primarily young people and there's relatively low risk of long-term harm, but my employees might spread the virus in the community...

> it is far easier to contain the issue in a factory floor than the supermarket

Although this claim has some logic to it, I'm not sure it is actually true. See the outbreaks at meatpacking plants, https://www.sltrib.com/news/2020/06/08/cache-valley-providin..., https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/06/08/us/meat-proce...

That's the thing about this novel virus. There is a lot of uncertainty.

These are all hard questions. I'm not pretending that health officials have uniformly made the right call, or even good calls. I am saying that if you think it's as simple as stating the policy "let anyone taking reasonable precautions open for business", I have a bridge to sell you.

> I'm not pretending that health officials have uniformly made the right call, or even good calls.

Good, then don't pretend that it's wrong to push back when health officials inconsistently apply their rules and cannot justify them when challenged.

I'm not sure. It would be good to prevent spread of disease. But also, Tesla's mission (https://www.tesla.com/about) is "to accelerate the world's transition to sustainable energy." This is a generational timescale business - in Musk's mind an extra 1.5% of population dying is probably worth it - especially if the alternative is Tesla dies.

Edit - here's an interesting question - how many lives is accelerating the world's transition to sustainable energy worth? Climate change is surely going to cost lives. Tesla also isn't really the best solution in my mind. I think we should all live in denser cities where you can walk, bike, and use transit.

If we're so concerned about the Tesla factory to the point of contemplating shutdowns, how do we feel about the scenes of bars and beaches filled with people all over the US?

How do you feel about them? Transmission of a respiratory virus at a windy beach is next to impossible, and photos of beaches look a lot more crowded than they really are due to the compressive distortion of telephoto lenses. Transmission of respiratory diseases at a bar, indoors, where people are elbow-by-elbow and intentionally suppressing their own immune responses with intoxicants, seems a lot more possible.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com