Hacker News Reader

Comment by vgchh | Hacker News Reader

Serious question: I am confused as to why do we see so many comments lamenting, what is essentially freedom of speech of EM? I mean, it's not like he is conclusively wrong about "Free America Now" comment. He may be proven wrong over time or even right.

View on HN

I think that it is a valid opinion to think that we should lift the lockdown - there is a huge cost to the shutdown, and flattening the curve was originally just to keep the hospitals below capacity, which they seem to be. However in the context of his other tweets, it seems irresponsible. He is retweeting conspiracy theories that hospitals are reporting cases of COVID for profit, and even made predictions they by the end of April we would have 0 cases (which has obviously not happened). He retweeted a YouTube video that was later removed for violating TOS, presumably because it was spreading false info about COVID (I disagree with that particular policy but it still indicates the video isn't something he should be retweeting).

He is not conclusively wrong to say that we should lift the lockdown. However the other things he is saying show that he is conclusively wrong about other aspects of the virus, and is spreading misinformation about it. Given how poor his predictions about it have been, his opinion is useless and dangerous given how many people listen and believe what he says.

I would love to know why you think it's a conspiracy theory that hospitals are reporting cases of COVID for profit. It's not like healthcare has never gamed the system. Not saying you are wrong, but it's a possibility that they indeed gamed the system. If he has made predictions that we will have 0 cases by end of April, that's just clearly brain-dead of him and it's fine if we are lamenting him for those stupid predictions.

The 0 cases tweet: https://mobile.twitter.com/elonmusk/status/12407546572631449...

And to expand on the reporting of COVID for profit, I think it is possible for hospitals to be over reporting COVID cases, but I think it borders on conspiracy theory to suggest that it is a significant contributor to the numbers we are seeing now. Deaths don't lie and the increase in deaths we are seeing lines up with the positive test results. So in the context of arguing that we are overreacting to COVID, I think it is a poor argument.

Considering that there are 40,000 unaccounted for deaths[1], it is far more likely that hospitals/municipalities are under counting COVID19 deaths.

[1]https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/21/world/coronav...

Hospitals are actually suffering economically as a result of this entire crisis, too. They are postponing and cancelling more profitable elective procedures[1]. If anything, they're incentivized to underreport the # of cases.

[1] See the FT: "Counter-intuitively, healthcare was one of the sectors that provided the biggest drag on the economy, as hospitals stopped performing lucrative elective procedures in order to focus on dealing with coronavirus patients." https://www.ft.com/content/06493320-083a-4a7d-94cc-8db581f9e...

> why you think it's a conspiracy theory that hospitals are reporting cases of COVID for profit

The complete lack of evidence is a good start.

People don't like to allow discussions about things they disagree with anymore. Everything has become so polarized, it's as if simply allowing the conversation to happen risks bringing in new evidence that might prove a person wrong.

I'm not saying I personally think everyone should head back out on the streets, but I think it's important we a least begin to discuss the pros and cons of doing so.

In all of this, I've still never heard a single logical or rational discussion about what the hell are we going to do in the medium-long term. Even if we "flatten the curve" now and go back to "normal" in 3 months, what will happen when cases skyrocket again? same thing all over again?

Once we reopen, we aren't going to regain capacity in hospital beds overnight. How are parts of the US going to avoid being to be on lockdown every two to eight weeks for the remainder of the summer? I feel if everyone understood that this cycle is inevitable, we could constructively benefit from people arguing the threat of reopening vs the threat of continued exposure. Instead, it's a game of chicken who wants to open up the economy later than June—just in time for cases to spike in July.

Freedom of speech is not freedom of consequences.

You can see some of the even more colorful stuff Elon said on the investor call covered here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/04/29/tesla-e...

He's not wrong.

So we have a democratically elected government doing what both science and popular opinion agree on. Somehow that isn't democratic because it forces successful business owners to loose money. Doing what Musk wants in this case would be closer to the economic side of fascism and certainly not democratic.

When you are miserable yourself all you can do is focus on the negative and dramatically make a big deal about everything.

Musk has probably been quite restrained in his tweets as it's pretty clear he thinks lockdowns are a stupid solution.

He is anything but restrained.[0]

He is not a Doctor, he is not an Epidemiologist, he is not a Statistician, he really, and I'm choosing my words wisely and with the amount of fandom he has, he really should shut the fuck up.

[0]: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1239650597906898947?lang...

Freedom of speech is not right for freedom of criticism. He stands on the "It's just a flue" side of the things and people who don't believe that are not happy about the things he says and pushes for. Nobody is putting him in jail or anything like that, therefore his free speech rights are not violated.

A useful guide from XKCD: https://xkcd.com/1357/

Its alt text is golden:

> I can't remember where I heard this, but someone once said that defending a position by citing free speech is sort of the ultimate concession; you're saying that the most compelling thing you can say for your position is that it's not literally illegal to express.

In my opinion if you have a big platform and are an influential person, you owe it to the people who follow you to not tweet out stupid shit you don’t know anything about.

Elon should honestly delete his twitter but it’s clear he loves the attention of being a celebrity who can make headlines.

HN is the most "doomer" place on the net, vehemently anti free-speech and insanely jealous of Elon musk. This is the perfect storm.

Har. You must be from Zerohedge.

I have literally never been on that site. Maybe I should though

Start here: https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/down-rabbit-hole-eurodolla...

One of the best articles written on the subject if you´re interested

Is it? HN seems very pro-free speech and EM compared to places like Twitter and Reddit.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

edit: Also not exactly the most sane places to compare :D

Reply on news.ycombinator.com