Every day, people make decisions around risk and people can have wildly different opinions on how much risk to accept in order to live.
So each employee should be able to make the choice to take a very small risk and go to work or to live in irrational fear and quit their job.
The only mistake Tesla made was saying they didn't have to come if they were afraid. They should have just made it clear, come to work or be fired.
I guess by your logic, CEOs of banks, supermarkets, food processing, farmers, truckers, utility workers, insurance companies, hardware stores, airlines, hotels, hospital workers, etc. are all evil because they are 'forcing' their employees to work too.
But I'm sure that your response (in spirit) will be "The only essential businesses that should be allowed to force people to work are the ones THAT I NEED. I don't need a Tesla so it's not an essential business and we can just let it go out of business and layoff 50K people."
You call it a "mistake". I call it lying. It wasn't an accident or a run of the mill bad phrasing, it was trying to placate the government and the press with one message while punishing everyone who didn't read between the lines of it.
And you're right about there not being a Tesla without employees showing up. That's why Elon fires anyone who he suspects recognizes the power of a strike.
What startup company could survive unionization and striking workers?
It is not in any way, shape or form, a "startup".
I get the feeling that this will not age well[1].
I appreciate your presumptions. As someone who has worked as a paramedic, first responder, who has been a participant in County Public Health meetings, as someone who has supervised a quarantine and isolation facility, you'd apparently be surprised by how conservative my perspective of things is, whether or not I "need" them, and how willing I am to accept the inconveniences therewith.
> So each employee should be able to make the choice to take a very small risk and go to work or to live in irrational fear and quit their job.
There's a rather vast middle ground there. How about expressing alarm at the conditions being entirely suboptimal for minimizing risk? Despite Elon's claims, there is apparently significant concern about social distancing, opaque issues at Tesla's facilities.
> I guess by your logic ... are all evil
Please don't put words in my mouth. I never stated or implied that Elon/Tesla were "evil", or anything approximating that.
I have an understanding that in order for society to continue to function certain things have to keep happening. I also understand that there is non-zero risk in this. I also know that given some care and flexibility, there are ways to significantly mitigate these unavoidable cases.
I've also not had a haircut for a few months (actually, I lie, my girlfriend used a trimmer, once). It may be that my definition of "essential/necessary" differs from others. I don't overly have much sympathy for the people claiming that they are being "tread on" because they're not able to easily access a nail salon, etc.
> That's a lot different than saying there is no threat.
He has downplayed the threat so significantly and in such frequent error - proved as error as time passes and his virus predictions do not come to pass - that he is effectively suggesting that indeed, "there is no threat" even if he does not use those direct words.
The ONLY way the US would have minimized COVID death was hyper-aggressive contact tracing. That didn't happen and still continues to not happen, so COVID will not be controlled and by the time any vaccine is developed we will reach herd immunity anyway so it won't matter.
The math says (and has always said) that the US will need to reach 400K-600K deaths before herd immunity is reached. And there is NOTHING that can change that number given the current state of COVID management. The recent protests/riots plus various easing measures guarantee another exponential spike in cases.
The vaccine won't happen in time to make a big dent in the numbers. Novel treatments (remdesivir, etc.) that reduce mortality can make a difference, but it's unclear how much of a difference and when.
It's unclear if masks and social distancing while largely re-opening the economy can keep R0 below one. So far it doesn't look like it, but we don't have enough data.
Elon made specific predictions about the US. If he was using China's data to make predictions about US laws and American behavior, then I repeat and stand by my words that Musk is therefore extremely bad at risk management.
China and the US are extremely different countries. There is no logic to basing American response predictions on China's actions; it is obviously flawed to the point of not being useful and also being harmful.
But I don't think your statement about 'risk management' makes any sense since there is no risk to be managed in this case. What exactly do you expect Tesla to do about a global pandemic?
Risk management implies risk mitigation. Tesla's greatest risk in all of this is economic slowdown which I'm sure they are addressing internally as prudently as possible given their situation and their predictions about the future economy.
There are many other deadly communicable diseases than just COVID, like the average flu for example.
COVID is worse than the average flu, but not radically worse by SUBJECTIVE OPINION.
Why exactly is COVID the HARD LINE for you while the flu is totally ok?
Do you not see there is a very large grey zone between:
[the regular flu] <---> [hypothetical plaque that kills 50% of everyone]
[totally accepted, [totally rejected,
society doesn't do society implements
anything] extreme measures]
If an earthquake would kill 1% of the world's population, it would be the event of the century. Instead, here we are, debating Covid's significance and conspiracy theories...
You're also grossly underestimating the real impact of 1% of the population dying in a short time span.
The US has had 122,550 COVID deaths so far and daily case numbers are spiking again:
https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html
That figure may well rise to 200,000 deaths by the end of the year.
Alameda County (where Tesla's Fremont plant is located) has had more COVID deaths than all of Australia: