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Comment by belval | Hacker News Reader

Alameda country has had about 1 case for every 20 people, which is 5%.[1]

The Tesla plant has 10000 employees and reported 450 cases between May and December. Which is 4.5%.

There is no data for January/February/March, but this doesn't read like a big deal at all. Furthermore, there is no way to confirm that those 450 cases come from the Tesla factory itself.

If the journalist had wanted to write a convincing article he should cover other businesses and show that among those that stayed open, Tesla is an outlier in covid cases, that would prove that the reopening endangered the workers.

[1] https://www.latimes.com/projects/california-coronavirus-case...

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> If the journalist had wanted to write a convincing article

The journalist doesn’t care about that. He just wants his readers to have an emotional reaction and release some endorphins by feeling like a better person than Elon.

Alameda county got to that percentage over the course of a year, Tesla did it in the period between May and December. January was one of the worst months for cases and you're counting it for the county but not for Tesla. It's not a meaningful comparison.

That article uses "tested positive" and "case" interchangeably, which conflicts with CDC's clinical definition of "case".

These threads are rife with accusations of gambling with lives, yet we can not by the numbers distinguish between an illness with symptoms and positive-testing infection. Are we sure these 5% and 4.5% are both as dangerous as each other? For all I know, they have measured different things.

It's even less of a story than that. The best estimates of COVID prevalence are in the 20-35% range, so about 4x the listed numbers. Since it's likely given their focus on testing they are closer to the true rate, the fact that it's "hundreds" and not "thousands" is the real story.

It's just a hit piece.

Most covid deaths occured in people while there were multiple safe and effective but banned vaccines. Anyone looking to place blame has 1 definitive place to look: the vaccine ban.

You have to include in your calculus the numerous unsafe and ineffective vaccines that also existed and the harm that those would have caused. Hard to say what that is exactly, but it’s certainly not nothing.

Which vaccines were banned where?

Maybe they are talking about vaccines like the Russian one. Which, by most expert accounts, was not sufficiently tested, not by a long shot. But, it has turned out to be a safe and relatively effective vaccine.

But of course, scolding a government for not giving it to people is like scolding someone for not buying the correct lottery ticket.

The difference is that those 450 cases at the tesla plant were easily avoidable, if not for the selfish actions of a powerful egomaniac.

You could also call it a calculated risk and it that case it seems like a reasonable action to keep the plant running.

A calculated risk on the lives of others? That's a funny way to see it.

Life is one big calculated risk in our and others lives... have you ever driven a car?

With the precautions they have set up (I think the data speaks for itself...) I’d rather a little bit of risk and have my livelihood.

This discussion is surreal, really. Can you see the difference between taking a risk on yourself, by your decision, or being forced to take it by decision of others?

every time you drive a car, you are choosing to increase the risk for others. I believe that is the point of the analogy.

Again though... how is this any different than having to commute to work? The thresholds might be different but this is a matter of degree not principle as your inflammatory language suggest.

It would be the same if, when starting my commute, I knew that today there would be a much higher risk of hurting someone with my car. But then, if my car was defective and I knew about it and caused an accident, wouldn't that be criminal behavior?

First you made a principle argument now you are admitting it is a matter of degrees - regardless you are at risk of hurting someone with your car every time you drive. All one can do is take precautions to a reasonable degree and carry on - that is exactly what Tesla did. Nobody was forced to ‘risk their life’, those who wanted to work were allowed to do so.

maybe. driving around while knowing that, say, your tire lug nuts are not properly tightened would possibly be criminally negligent. but there's always stuff you could have done to make your car safer. a lot of it is stuff people know or should know. how many people do you think actually check their tire pressure at least once a month?

When you drive a car, you are taking a chance that you will cause an accident that kills another person

Perhaps even more on point:

A certain number of people are going to have a bad reaction to the COVID-19 vaccines and die as a result. Fortunately, this number appears to be quite low, but it's not zero. It's never zero (there are people who are born allergic to breast milk, and who can die from that).

Our society has calculated that the risks involved with getting COVID-19 are higher than those involved in getting the vaccine. Therefore we are vaccinating people, even though some are guaranteed to die from that (but once again emphasizing that is going to be a whole lot fewer deaths than if we don't vaccinate).

Classic calculated risk.

> The difference is that those 450 cases at the tesla plant were easily avoidable, if not for the selfish actions of a powerful egomaniac

Evidence required. Without counterfactual, the plant seem safer than the county : 4.5% vs 5% as mentioned above. For all we know, they got sick while going to work due to the incidence in the county, and would not have been if they could sleep and eat at the plant.

Also, the workers may prefer being paid than on the government dole

But all the journalist care is making an incendiary article to present as class warfare what is just plain good sense: eventually, plants will be reopened

Evidence required? Those workers could have stayed at home, weren't they being forced to come to work. This goes beyond the raw numbers, the real issue is that the workers were forced to take the risk.

The worst part? Quoting the article:

"It had promised they could remain home if they felt uncomfortable returning to the line. The Post reported in late June and July that workers concerned about covid exposure received termination notices after they did not return to work.

See my edit, but this article is a beautiful example of framing your data to get a specific conclusion from the reader.

Show me other businesses so that I can assess if Tesla is worse otherwise this is almost just a "Tesla bad" article.

Counterfactual is really important for comparison. Many people may fail to grasp this concept for a fair comparison.

The counterfactual of getting infected while go to work at the tesla, is not, staying home and not getting infected. Staying home, you can still get infected (but not getting paid).

There are so many reports just compare what observed to a perfection. I don't think journalists wrote those articles are stupid enough to compare reality to a perfection, because they can immediately show some level of sophistications when defending someone they like. I believe this is just a tactic for intentionally biased reporting. Journalists can always control how many data they want to present in their reports.

Given how many people argue the dumbest things about this article (like that if we include the January 2020 Covid numbers things would be differrent!) I don't think the issue is intentional stupidity. The journalist has a story, and if they asked the questions about context they wouldn't have a story, so they simply ignore those issues.

But when they targeted Tesla for the story, they already had an agenda.

Are you assuming all those cases were contracted at the plant? Given their precautions and the fact that they have less than the general surrounding population... that seems pretty unlikely

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