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Fremont Tesla workers tested positive for coronavirus days after plant reopened

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Fremont Tesla workers tested positive for coronavirus days after plant reopened

#91

Post by radioactivist »

stellar678 wrote: post #38

It would be great if people writing articles like this (I hesitate to call them journalists these days) could take the time to provide more context. According to the county dashboard, Alameda County had 2,564 cases on May 20, 2 days after Tesla reopened: https://ac-hcsa.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html... With a population of 1,671,000, that means about 0.15% of Alameda County residents had been diagnosed…

While I agree the article doesn't properly contextualize the number, that's not really the right comparison.

Alameda county has had 2564 cases in total since March (up to May 20th) -- so you'd have expected 15 employees to have tested positive for COVID since March. This is a very different statement than 2 of its employees have tested positive shortly after it re-opened.

Loosely one might compare it to those that tested positive in the week of May 20th, which, according to your link, is about 400-500 new cases (about 5x fewer than the cumulative total). So you might reasonably expect something like ~3 cases if you assume the Tesla workers had the same positive test rate as the general population of the county.

Re: Fremont Tesla workers tested positive for coronavirus days after plant reopened

#92

Post by zaroth »

r00fus wrote: post #36
xkjkls wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really don't think he did any more math than "I want this factory open"

I really hope we remind folks with responsibility like Musk - that their actions do have consequences, and that's why Tesla is singled out here. I say this as a huge EV proponent and someone who has a Cybertruck on order.

I’m convinced Tesla is being singled out here because Musk took an outspoken approach to COVID from the beginning, and even though every other automaker has reopened their plants and the county has allowed them to open based on a comprehensive worker safety plan, Tesla continues to be targeted with hit pieces like this which are statistically no more meaningful than saying “humans work at Tesla factory”.

A Tesla factory has a fixed set of workers probably working consistent shifts, that is doing temperature checks at the entrances and supplying PPE is probably as safe as a non-work-from-home environment that we can find. They gained a lot of experience months earlier doing to same protocols on their China factory.

I also have a Cybertruck in order and I can’t wait to get my hands on one. I love that they are taking the risk to bring something so unique to the mass market.

Re: Fremont Tesla workers tested positive for coronavirus days after plant reopened

#93

Post by pathseeker »

mistermann wrote: post #68
pathseeker wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Why the breathless article about 2 cases? Because articles are now written to confirm people's preconceived notions. Articles that confirm your biases are more likely to be shared than articles which don't.

I honestly wonder if this writing style is conscious and intentional though, or rather un(sub)conscious and accidental. Look at comments in forums...in that case, people have no profit motive, although they do have a "get upvotes" motive (so, virtue signalling is a legit motive, to some degree, but one notion to consider is that people very often no longer discriminate between that which is concrete factual and that…

Oh, it's likely not conscious by the author. The most convincing of these one-sided views are the ones written by people who are "true believers" in their agendas.

Don't tell authors to take extreme stances, just ensure that stories get assigned to the ones that have strong views about the topic.

Even better, let the authors themselves decide what to cover. They will pretty quickly focus on their pet political propaganda and produce the click bait needed to drive eyes.

Re: Fremont Tesla workers tested positive for coronavirus days after plant reopened

#94

Post by pathseeker »

WetBurd wrote: post #57
stellar678 wrote: post #38

It would be great if people writing articles like this (I hesitate to call them journalists these days) could take the time to provide more context. According to the county dashboard, Alameda County had 2,564 cases on May 20, 2 days after Tesla reopened: https://ac-hcsa.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html... With a population of 1,671,000, that means about 0.15% of Alameda County residents had been diagnosed…

The original article is by a writer of the Washington Post. If this doesn't count as journalism, I struggle to find examples that do. The journalist spoke with two workers within the production facility. "One of the workers said a supervisor confirmed two positive cases to a group at the Fremont-based seat assembly facility" This is an example of just one supervisor confirming two positive cases. It is likely that th…

>The original article is by a writer of the Washington Post. If this doesn't count as journalism

It doesn't matter where it came from. Some publications just have different ratios of biased crap and the biases are different depending on the institution.

Re: Fremont Tesla workers tested positive for coronavirus days after plant reopened

#95

Post by nwienert »

WetBurd wrote: post #74
nwienert wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We’re they confirmed not positive before it reopened? Otherwise, this literally means nothing.

I wouldn't go so far to say it "means nothing". If they were confirmed not-positive before the reopening how come this information was not publicly made available beforehand? If they weren't tested and then went back to work during the reopening, doesn't this indicate a lack of diligence in screening returning employees? In any case the main issue is that Musk reopened the plant against local authorities' wishes and…

The employees were and are free to do as they wish.

The main issue for you, perhaps, is violating authorities “wishes”. Wishes, because in fact it wasn’t illegal.. freedom of assembly gives us that, we aren’t in wartime, and until tested in court those local orders are just recommendations that need be judged in court... where they’d be struck down.

Not that they weren’t good common sense at the time, but the coronavirus very clearly now is not only a smaller risk than we thought, but also only specifically a risk to very certain vulnerable groups who are easy to identify.

If you are so worried about authorities’ wishes, I wonder what you think of the protests? Do you think the authorities’ wishes were generally right in the case of George Floyd? Should the protestors have been rounded up for violating wishes and causing massive risk? Seems you care a ton about people not dying from the virus, so I’d assume so.

Re: Fremont Tesla workers tested positive for coronavirus days after plant reopened

#96

Post by ricardobeat »

admax88q wrote: post #29
ricardobeat wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there's the standard HN mental gymnastics to defend Musk. I'm pretty sure that was dry sarcasm, and your comment is the one doing mental gymnastics...

Maybe, doesn't read like dry sarcasm to me. EDIT: It reads like defense of Musk. Like "he's not so bad, he asked to be the one held accountable" I hope none of his employees or their relations die from Covid, no amount of holding Musk "accountable" can reverse that.

Read it like this: the workers could not be held accountable anyway since re-opening was his own demand as the business owner. He is already responsible, not the workers, so that 'sacrifice' is void of meaning. I don't see any way that can be read as a defense of Musk.

But mostly I wanted to point out that your comment is in bad taste, and against HN guidelines. That kind of generalization never lands well.

Re: Fremont Tesla workers tested positive for coronavirus days after plant reopened

#97

Post by [deleted] »

rad_gruchalski wrote: post #75
nwienert wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We’re they confirmed not positive before it reopened? Otherwise, this literally means nothing.

It means there is coronavirus at the Tesla plant. To give an example which way it goes: in Poland, the virus appeared a few weeks ago between coal mines workers. Yesterday there was a decision to temporarily shut 12 coal mines down.

[deleted]

Re: Fremont Tesla workers tested positive for coronavirus days after plant reopened

#98

Post by [deleted] »

radioactivist wrote: post #91
stellar678 wrote: post #38

It would be great if people writing articles like this (I hesitate to call them journalists these days) could take the time to provide more context. According to the county dashboard, Alameda County had 2,564 cases on May 20, 2 days after Tesla reopened: https://ac-hcsa.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html... With a population of 1,671,000, that means about 0.15% of Alameda County residents had been diagnosed…

While I agree the article doesn't properly contextualize the number, that's not really the right comparison. Alameda county has had 2564 cases in total since March (up to May 20th) -- so you'd have expected 15 employees to have tested positive for COVID since March . This is a very different statement than 2 of its employees have tested positive shortly after it re-opened. Loosely one might compare it to those that t…

[deleted]

Re: Fremont Tesla workers tested positive for coronavirus days after plant reopened

#99

Post by Anon4Now »

rad_gruchalski wrote: post #75
nwienert wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We’re they confirmed not positive before it reopened? Otherwise, this literally means nothing.

It means there is coronavirus at the Tesla plant. To give an example which way it goes: in Poland, the virus appeared a few weeks ago between coal mines workers. Yesterday there was a decision to temporarily shut 12 coal mines down.

> It means there is coronavirus at the Tesla plant

Possibly. The employees could have contracted the virus outside work.

Re: Fremont Tesla workers tested positive for coronavirus days after plant reopened

#100

Post by jlebar »

twblalock wrote: post #79
jlebar wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For how long? What if there is never a vaccine? Will we hide in our homes forever? [...] Lockdowns just can't last forever Indeed. The purpose of the lockdown was to buy us time to build e.g. contract tracing infrastructure, massively expand testing, and develop other means to allow us to reopen safely. Instead for the most part we've sat on our hands and done very little. Thus we're saying, well, sucks to be us, I…

> It didn't have to be this way. It doesn't have to be this way. There is plenty of evidence of this from around the world. But it is this way, so what's your point? We can wish all we want for things to be better, but we have to start reopening no matter what. The economy will collapse if we don't. We are out of time.

My point was to respond to your "what if there's never a vaccine? Will we hide in our homes forever?"

There's a middle ground between "no attempt made to mitigate the loss of human life" and "safe and effective vaccine readily available". We can and should be doing more.

It's also not too late to do more.

But instead, we seem to be adopting the nihilism that I read in your original post, that, (in a few ways) time's up.

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