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Comment by _9hey | Hacker News Reader

Unpopular opinion: articles like this are just designed to shame people who don’t buy into the popular opinion. Not even all medical experts agree on the best course of action regarding herd immunity, sip, etc. For the other 5% of the article, there could be other dynamics at play that got those employees fired, though Tesla has a less than stellar reputation for work life balance.

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I disagree. While this could still be an honest mistake, if done intentionally it definitely goes beyond civil disobedience. Given the decision to reopen the factory and terminate employees that do not show up, there's no justification for misleading them about their options.

Agreed. But the main content of the article was more about Covid 19 than the employees, and it seems more like a piece to shape thoughts by reinforcing ideas about public health policy than to discuss the employees’ welfare. More shame than substance.

>Not even all medical experts agree on the best course of action regarding herd immunity...

This is a dubious claim at best. That being said the real problem is that Musk made the decision about how much risk is acceptable for his employees without their input and seems to be retaliating against those who disagreed.

That’s the secondary issue at best. The primary issue is that the government has done exactly that to the people and media has taken it upon themselves to shape and enforce sociological norms. Shelter in place causes major health risks to a subset of the population. Shelter in place is a tradeoff of public health. But when the economy, rights, and other major factors are considered, it looks less like a tradeoff and more like a betrayal.

> This is a dubious claim at best

Ask any microbiologist.

>But when the economy, rights, and other major factors are considered, it looks less like a tradeoff and more like a betrayal.

This is just crazy. Every other major country in the world has essentially beaten the virus with mask wearing and lockdowns and the US is about to have another devastating wave of cases in almost every major city outside the Notheast because people like you that are astonishingly selfish and arrogant have flouted the process and actively oppose it. You're cutting off your head to spite your face.

The economic considerations are secondary, we are probably looking at 500K deaths by 2021. That's World War level of deaths and your complaining about lockdowns and masks? Wtf is wrong with you, seriously. Learn empathy. People are dying.

>Ask any microbiologist.

So you've gone from "not all experts agree" to "all microbiologists agree". This is very poor form.

Now we’re resorting to name calling are we? Let’s consider first principles, like microbiology, before jumping on the bandwagon of “everyone else is doing it” because circumstances vary widely. What is selfish is to ignore other factors that play an even more significant role than coronavirus, which has an extremely low mortality rate. I have not gone to “all microbiologists agree”, but rather that you ought to listen to what they have to say over a journalist or government official. It is a good time to learn empathy, and statistics, to avoid the kind of narrow thinking your last post vividly illustrated.

>What is selfish is to ignore other factors that play an even more significant role than coronavirus, which has an extremely low mortality rate

You are just flat wrong, dangerously so. The actual numbers show that Covid-19 is 10s to 100s of times more deadly than the flu. You are just wildly uninformed and your confidence in your ignorance is astonishing.

https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality

Here’s another comment for you to downvote - thank you very much. Next time you think you know what’s best for the country, consider people who don’t have the privilege of keeping a job and staying at home. Not everyone is a tech worker, and some are devastated right now, not because of a virus that is statistically quite similar yet slightly worse than the seasonal FLU!

>because of a virus that is statistically quite similar yet slightly worse than the seasonal FLU

I'm sorry but you must be a troll. The numbers couldn't be more obvious, last year there were 39M - 56M flu cases in the US with 24K-62K deaths. We are at 2.3M confirmed Covid-19 cases and 120K deaths in roughly 3-4 Months. So a fraction of the cases and already 2-6 TIMES as many deaths and we aren't near finished. How do you see those numbers and say this is basically the flu?? Next I suppose you'll say states are falsifying their numbers to hurt Trump? Truly deluded.

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/preliminary-in-season-e...

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/case...

Operate like the Shanghai factory, done.

Tesla doesn’t care unless there are steep penalties. They wouldn’t get away with this in their Shanghai factory.

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