firstly, I want to apologize if it seems like I was trying to offend you or undermine, your job. I wasnt
secondly, so you really think he's willing to let employees die for profit motive? Because I doubt that.
No offense taken
The mortality rate for Covid is still quite low, and Tesla benefits from a largely young workforce, so his employees are not the target group that requires protection against Covid. I'm sure that's how he sees it. There is also enough literature and medical expert opinion that questions the effectiveness of quarantine or that put into question the cost-benefit analysis of lockdowns and quarantining for him to get behind it and say "look, I'm right"; even if it is contested. I have no doubt he thinks about the health risks of his employees but seeing how he has managed his workforce before, he doesn't really take into considering the effects it would have on his employees' personal lives. So he doesn't really think in terms of their loved ones who could he at risk. For him, loss of productivity at the scale of what it could be is not justifiable.
Case in point, I worked in delivery. Our end of quarters were absolutely brutal. I would come in at 7am at the latest, work without any breaks until 11pm to 1am, go home, sleep, back at work at 7 every day of the week. You do this for 3-4 weeks every 3 months. So 1 of 3 months was like this, and the holidays coincided with an end of quarter. I barely saw my kids. It would take at least a week to recover from the month madness, not to mention the cumulative toll it would have on my mental health over time even when it wasn't end of quarter. I was always tired, and my wife complained of my absent mindedness or just not really being present. Now, if you're fresh out of school and you want to use your talents to save the world, working those kind of hours won't have the same effect as those like me who have a family. But where I worked the burnout rate was still high among single people with no family at home. We would always get these emails from Elon saying he understands the sacrifices we make but that this is the most important quarter and we absolutely need to deliver results because it's a David vs Goliath battle and bla bla bla. We bought it for the first couple of quarters but then it became a joke among us. Every quarter was "the most crucial one in Tesla history".
I eventually left and my life has been lifted ever since. Just to give you an idea of how bad it was for me, I was diagnosed with cancer in November 2017 and with that came that shock and trauma of not knowing what was going to happen. The first time I was able to smile was when my doctor said "ok so we will put you on a leave of absence from work for 3 months and reassess, is that ok with you?". I felt this enormous weight lifted off my shoulders and I was happy for the rest of the day. I still didn't know how bad my cancer was, many signs pointed to the fact that my prognosis wasn't good due to the scans, but I still felt that high I hadn't felt in a long time. I ended up getting a different diagnosis than what the doctors thought it was and I went from 0% chance of making it to 80% and I survived. I won't tell you what happened when I went back to work cause that's another novel in itself, but it caused me to leave.
My point is, Elon is not the evil money grabbing capitalist some think he is. I think he is genuinely interested in saving the world and using private industry to inspire people and give them hope. But in doing so he uses a utilitarian approach to get to those ends, and, for him, tremendous sacrifice needs to be made. He certainly makes them. The guy works like a dog and has no other part to his life other than work. He barely sleeps. But his expectations on others are extreme and borderline abusive. He's probably not thinking that far ahead into how questioning public health measures could affect the immeasurable amount of lives affected by people not self quarantining if they test positive. It would be bad for his business. Loss of productivity means fewer electric cars on the road. Fewer electric cars on the road means more gas powered cars on the road and more pollution. Pollution = more death, probably more deaths than my employees contracting Covid. Therefore, these measures are bad.
I guess he's just not aware of his biases in his calculations.
