Tesla's Stock Drops Billions After Elon Musk's Tweetstorm Friday (bbc.co.uk) 206
Friday Techcrunch reported Elon Musk tweeted to his 33.4 million followers that Tesla's stock price "was 'too high' in his opinion, immediately sending shares into a free fall and in possible violation of an agreement reached with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission last year."
Tesla's shares plummetted nearly 12% over the next 30 minutes, which reduced Tesla's valuation by over $14 billion, the BBC reports, while reducing Musk's own stake by $3 billion, according to an article shared by long-time Slashdot reader UnresolvedExternal. "In other tweets, he said his girlfriend was mad at him, while another simply read: 'Rage, rage against the dying of the light of consciousness.'"
Even at the end of the day Tesla's shares were still down 7.17%. But Techcrunch called Musk's stock-price tweet "just one of many sent out in rapid fire that covered everything from demands to 'give people back their freedom' and lines from the U.S. National Anthem to quotes from poet Dylan Thomas and a claim that he will sell all of his possessions."
Rolling Stone has more on what they're calling Musk's "quarantine tantrum," noting that in a Wednesday earnings call, Musk had also complained about restrictions on non-essential businesses and ordinary people. "To say that they cannot leave their house, and they will be arrested if they do, this is fascist... give people back their goddamn freedom."
The magazine notes this drew a scathing rebuttal on nationwide TV from The Daily Show's Trevor Noah: "Finally, someone has decided to call out this fascist American government that's asking people to please stay in their houses to try and save their own lives," Noah said sarcastically. "I mean, you're not even allowed to go to the grocery store anymore! Well, actually, you can go to the grocery store, but you can't even go for a walk! I mean, you can do that too, but what about the beach? You're not allowed to go to the beach, except for all the states where you're allowed to go to the beach. But you definitely can't go to H&M, and that is the definition of fascism."
CNN Business writes that Musk, "heralded for years as a pioneer in space travel and transportation, has recently veered into disseminating coronavirus misinformation," adding that Musk's comments "also come in stark contrast to those made by some of his peers in Silicon Valley, who have urged caution on reopening." "I worry that reopening certain places too quickly, before infection rates have been reduced to very minimal levels, will almost guarantee future outbreaks and worsen longer-term health and economic outcomes," Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said during an earnings call Wednesday.
Tesla's shares plummetted nearly 12% over the next 30 minutes, which reduced Tesla's valuation by over $14 billion, the BBC reports, while reducing Musk's own stake by $3 billion, according to an article shared by long-time Slashdot reader UnresolvedExternal. "In other tweets, he said his girlfriend was mad at him, while another simply read: 'Rage, rage against the dying of the light of consciousness.'"
Even at the end of the day Tesla's shares were still down 7.17%. But Techcrunch called Musk's stock-price tweet "just one of many sent out in rapid fire that covered everything from demands to 'give people back their freedom' and lines from the U.S. National Anthem to quotes from poet Dylan Thomas and a claim that he will sell all of his possessions."
Rolling Stone has more on what they're calling Musk's "quarantine tantrum," noting that in a Wednesday earnings call, Musk had also complained about restrictions on non-essential businesses and ordinary people. "To say that they cannot leave their house, and they will be arrested if they do, this is fascist... give people back their goddamn freedom."
The magazine notes this drew a scathing rebuttal on nationwide TV from The Daily Show's Trevor Noah: "Finally, someone has decided to call out this fascist American government that's asking people to please stay in their houses to try and save their own lives," Noah said sarcastically. "I mean, you're not even allowed to go to the grocery store anymore! Well, actually, you can go to the grocery store, but you can't even go for a walk! I mean, you can do that too, but what about the beach? You're not allowed to go to the beach, except for all the states where you're allowed to go to the beach. But you definitely can't go to H&M, and that is the definition of fascism."
CNN Business writes that Musk, "heralded for years as a pioneer in space travel and transportation, has recently veered into disseminating coronavirus misinformation," adding that Musk's comments "also come in stark contrast to those made by some of his peers in Silicon Valley, who have urged caution on reopening." "I worry that reopening certain places too quickly, before infection rates have been reduced to very minimal levels, will almost guarantee future outbreaks and worsen longer-term health and economic outcomes," Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said during an earnings call Wednesday.
SEC? (Score:5, Insightful)
Didn't they tell shit-for-brains to shut up and not mention stocks? Stop pissing off the SEC?
They didn't need to spend that much on marketing.
Re: SEC? (Score:2, Funny)
Didn't they tell shit-for-brains...
You heard the Musk jokes they tell at ULA?
Neither have I.
Re: SEC? (Score:4, Insightful)
You are either being disingenuous, or displaying some incredible naïveté.
It would be news in another era... (Score:5, Informative)
It would be news in another era, but after having the US president post tweets that most 8-year olds would be ashamed of night and day for years now, it is rather business as usual...
Hope Musk isn't completely losing it, his companies do some great work.
Re:It would be news in another era... (Score:5, Funny)
My guess is that he was drunk as fuck, high as fuck or both.
He's not wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
Both car manufacturers and real estate are going to lose a lot of value by the time the pandemic is over, selling his assets is a rational financial move. Tweeting about it, especially in such a rambling way isn't going to help though, that's not what they mean when they say you should sell high.
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LOL wait, so in the year 2020 you're going to trot out a, "psychology doesn't matter, market participants are rational" theory?
Don't forget to ask if anybody has studied this before you settle on it as your PhD thesis.
Re: He's not wrong (Score:2)
...selling his assets is a rational financial move.
I sense confusion; he's selling assets, not stocks (if he was selling stocks, he'd hardly proclaim the share price to be too high).
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He's not selling his equity assets - just real world physical assets.
Most people don't understand that he may be rich, but he operates on the verge of being bust almost all of the time. The fact that Musk doesn't take a salary is actually a big problem. The only way he can take advantage of his stock wealth other than selling it and losing control of companies in the process is to take loans out against it. But, since it is stock and its value could plummet at any moment, they only loan him pennies on the d
Acid (Score:3)
Elon Musk is clearly taking too much Acid. Slow down, idiot, slow down.
Seemed like a good opportunity (Score:2)
I don't do much in the stock market but I definitely took advantage of the drop in price. And since it contributed in triggering another drop in stock prices overall, I didn't let complaining about the impact on the market distract me from getting back in the market.
One man's broken egg is another man's omelet. Which is to say, I didn't start the fire but don't get mad at me if I roast some marshmallows.
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You start talking about eggs and then you switch to marshmallows. I don't know what kind of recipe you're making but I want no part of it.
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It seems obvious, but he's making a marshmallow crepe cake and he's browning the marshmallows under the lizard because it was already hot.
Do you even cook, Bro?
Going over the deep end (Score:4, Insightful)
Musk seems to be in a weird place right now, besides the twit about tesla's stock price he's been twitting a lot about the COVID situation and demanding the quarantine to be lifted up.
I guess that this is his business side talking as his companies probably don't have the money to stay afloat even with a few weeks of down time and months would mean death, but it really surprised me to see this kind of behavior from some one that is extremely into science and basically has his motivation for what he does in life based on climate change (tesla electric cars, reusable rockets/going to mars, solar roofs). He really is on the wrong side of history in this matter.
Quite sad.
Re:Going over the deep end (Score:5, Interesting)
I think it's his savior complex showing. He's had a tendency to want to jump in and fix things that he's got no clue about like a cave rescue submarine for those kids in Thailand. With COVID-19 he's basically been asked to sit on the sidelines and wait it out and it's killing him. So since he can't fix it he wants to dismiss it so he can get back to being center stage and saving the world.
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And yet, he knows he's not a doctor.
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He's an immigrant, and having him take a public stance against our quarantine during a global pandemic is disgusting, and misguided. This is absolutely not how you're expected to treat the people when you move to a new place. Not your fight, Asshole, do what you're told during a crisis.
He should be advised that his rights may be lawfully suspended during a public health crisis, particularly a pandemic, up to and including his right to life. He's a fucking idiot who didn't attend any Western Civilization c
Re:Going over the deep end (Score:4, Insightful)
Musk wants his stock to go down? (Score:3)
Maybe he wants to buy more of his own stock?
Re:Musk wants his stock to go down? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Not just warned about it, fined $40M.
Tesla were supposed to be moderating his tweets so they are probably in trouble again too.
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Well, a public corporation is required and presumed to share the public interest, so the company lawyers are going to have a really hard time even taking his side on this.
I don't see how he leads SpaceX, either. In fact, I'm not sure how any of his companies can continue to service government contracts without removing him.
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Options Spread (Score:5, Interesting)
Tesla has bought options at 500 and sold options at 700. They sold this credit spread when they sold bonds last year to prevent dilution. So tesla needs the price of shares to stay between 500 and 700 till 2021 for maximum profit.
Watch out anytime it crosses 700. Tesa will either sell shares to dilute or Musk will do something crazy to get the stock down to 700.
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I'm not sure this makes that much sense.
He is set to receive a CEO Performance Award [sec.gov] here very soon if he hasn't already. The only metric he was waiting on I suspect was having the 180-day moving average [marketwatch.com] go above $432. This will trigger a tranche payout of 1.7M stock options at a $350 buy point. Tesla was also nearing the $150B market cap mark as well and after getting the 180-day and 30-day moving average over that point he'd receive another 1.7M stock options at $350 (getting this pay out was going to be
I love this Stock (Score:2)
It is SO predicatable
Step 1) Sky rocket up to prices that based on unreasonable expectations because everyone realizes how smart the engineers are.
Step 2) Fall like a Stone because everyone realizes how bat shit crazy the management is!
Step 3) Buy calls after Step 2, Buy Puts after Step 1, make a ton of cash.
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maybe it's a good time to buy TSLA ...
Buy high, sell low, that's how slashdot rolls.
Should have kept his mouth shut (Score:2)
But, more importantly, the past tweeterrheas happened at times of severe stress to cash flow to the company. Tesla got 2 billion raise. But still it m
Re: Should have kept his mouth shut (Score:2)
The Tantrum (Score:5, Insightful)
As something of a Musk fanboi I was pretty perturbed by his "taking away people's freedoms" tweet.
They way I read it is this. His factories are shut down. He wants them open.
He thinks, as many do, that if you are super smart and awesome and shit you can avoid COVID-19 infections even if you are working. Stay at home is for people that aren't super smart and awesome and shit. But he and his people should be allowed to open because they are all super smart and awesome and shit so they should be allowed to run his factories in his super smart and awesome and shit way.
Of course he doesn't say it that way. It is all about "taking away people's freedoms."
Worse: He seems to think that since there are lots of hospital beds available RIGHT NOW that the stay-at-home policy is not needed. Holy crap I am not going to bother writing how stupid that is but I guess that is just a manifested pitfall of always being some super smart and awesome as shit. Bill Gates once pointed out that success is a very poor teacher and this is a good illustration of that.
We are not seeing his best moments. Excuse me while I go buy up some more TSLA stock.
Re: The Tantrum (Score:2)
He used to be seen here as Darth Vader. And rightly so.
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He used to be seen here as Darth Vader.
Well, I am not the "here" you refer to. I judge statements on their merit. Not on what "side" I am on or what other people seem to think is cool.
For example as much as I despise Trump and make no secret of it I can still go point to cases where I judge he said or did the right thing. I don't happen to be pro or anti Gates but if that insight is actually his he is right regardless about how I feel about him.
In this case I mentioned I was partisan for Musk, making no secret of that either. I think th
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Darth Vader would either support the quarantine, or renegotiate.
He would not whine about it.
He used to be a fucking Jedi, he at least has basic competence and leadership capability.
Bill Gates isn't on twitter whining, he's spending time and money responding to the crisis! In consultation with medical professionals.
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There's a special kind of stupidity that only really smart people have. You just get used to being right when most people around you disagree.
Also you've got to factor in the billionaire shame-exemption card. When I read the National Enquirer tried to blackmail Bezos with dick-pics, I laughed my ass off. Did they think people would start *shunning* him?
A self-made billionaire may well be a genius, but he's not some to got to for
a critical perspective.
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Excuse me while I go buy up some more TSLA stock.
TSLA last trade $701.32
52 wk high $968.9899
52 wk low $176.9919
Yep, looks like a steal! (/lol)
Elon is a modern Gerald Ratner! (Score:3)
In case you've never heard of Gerald Ratner, he had a string of well known jewellry shops in the UK in the 1990s. The products were cheap but OK for most people. One day he said at a formal public meeting that his products were cheap because they were crap. His business lost £500 million overnight, he hired a new chairman to save it. A few weeks later the new chairman pulled off a coup and sacked Ratner from his own company and renamed it!
A lesson to that moron Musk to shut his big, fat yap before someone decides they can run his business better than him!
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A lesson to that moron Musk to shut his big, fat yap before someone decides they can run his business better than him!
I expect the SEC to make the decision for him. You don't get to shoot off your mouth and make billions evaporate when you're a CEO. That affects the fortunes of REAL people, like hedge funds. He lost the Chairmanship of Tesla for his last public stupidity. He's going to lose the CEO position for this one. And he might be better off. He's obviously under too much stress, and the woman he's with is making it worse.
Productivity and the lockdown (Score:2)
Tech CEOs are totally opposed to lifting the lockdown. With nothing else to do people on lockdown are working 16 hr days. Tech productivity has shot up like crazy.
They also know when the lockdown is lifted people are going to take days off to travel and decompress from these 16 hr days. Tech CEOs are quivering in their shoes for the day the lockdown is lifted.
Musk is an exception as he needs his factory to run but if his factory had been in China like Apple, Google etc and his engineers were on lockdown wor
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That's because those people are new at working from home. They're afraid that the boss think they're slacking off at home so they grossly over-compensate. Given them a few more months and reality will settle in and the working hours will go down, possibly lower than when they were at their workplace, before settling back up to what should be their normal working hours.
Re: Productivity and the lockdown (Score:3)
Proof that stock markets = criminal insanity (Score:2)
Otherwise they would be a hard reflection of the actual measured (work hours * skill) of the company.
Not some ridiculous emotional belief palm, swaying to the guff of every six-toed born-to-be-wealthy pony fucker.
Remember: The purchase power of your and my salary indirectly depends on that crap! That is NOT OK!
Re: Proof that stock markets = criminal insanity (Score:2)
That's the mythical man month which we knew about decades ago.
How do you measure "skill" anyway?
Remember Howard Hughs? (Score:2)
Sounds like Musk is on his way to insanity also.
Re: Remember Howard Hughs? (Score:2)
When are people going to accept... (Score:3, Funny)
Elon isn't Tony Stark, he's Zapp Brannigan.
no doubt SEC is going to crawl all over him again (Score:2)
He was just being sarcastic! (Score:2)
Can't believe you all fell for that, you're all just as stupid as the lamestream media. Musk is clearly a very stable genius.
I understand the frustration (Score:3)
There are ways to still run the factories even while taking precautions and making sure we adhere to social distancing. Things will move more slowly, and become more expensive, but that does not mean there are no ways to do it.
You can divide the work into more shifts, add cleaning sessions in between, "quarantine" the teams (different shifts do not engage each other), add testing on site, for everyone, for every shift, before and after. And many others.
A factory is already an orderly place with many existing rules and regulations. Adding more is cumbersome but doable.
Shutting down it entirely is just wasteful. We can agree on a percentage 10%, 30%, 50% output. But allowing productive people to produce is "essential".
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Re:And it will rise again (Score:4, Informative)
On that note, let's fact check the CNN fact check.
The call said nothing about Tesla's ability to "source suppliers". Musk talked about how Tesla would weather the storm fine, but some of their existing suppliers might not, and complained about how the policies are destroying such people's livelihoods.
CNN kindly omits here the fact that they posted misinformation about Musk's hospital donations with doing no due diligence, then left it up after being corrected, then when called out by Musk on Twitter, their director of global communications went on a multi-post Twitter rant, including spreading misinformation about the efficacy of non-invasive ventilators.
CNN, of course, has the bully pulpit here, and can post whatever they want in articles like the above without anyone being able to comment.
It is of course not true that all "health officials" support the same policies, as can be seen in the simple fact that health officials in different countries have adopted radically different policies (including health officials in my own country, which has nearly wiped out the disease, without a lockdown).
What CNN is doing here is manufacturing "false consensus".
CNN, in an attempt to contrast Musk and Tesla with other companies, neglects to mention that Tesla enacted work-from-home weeks before it became mandatory, for those workers capable of doing so. Indeed, the two Tesla workers diagnosed with COVID-19 had been working from home for weeks at the time of diagnosis.
In late January, IFRs of over 3% were being bandied about as official numbers. Current IFR estimates range from 0,12-0,2% in Santa Clara to 0,55% in New York City. Influenza is generally around 0,1%. Musk was certainly far closer to accurate.
Musk later also followed up stating that all panic is dumb. Is CNN saying that panic is a good thing? This tweet was made around the time that reports of people hoarding toilet paper were filling up the press.
Musk - like probably a large minority of people on this website, and indeed, this website itself - frequently comments about research papers when they're published. CNN is attempting to conflate Musk making brief comments about drugs being promising when research fi
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I'll also note that I find it weird, but entirely unsurprising, that they neglect to mention that many of Musk's discussions were back and forth with Nate Silver [twitter.com] (of fivethirtyeight fame), who has been making many of the exact same points. But of course, everyone loves Nate Silver but Musk is everyone's favourite punching bag, so...
Re:I'm not an Elon Musk fan (Score:4)
And another few months after lifting the quarantine, there will also not be any country to talk about.
During quarantine: lots of people, some of them poor.
Without quarantine: a lot less people, most of them poor.
But hey, go ahead, reopen. See where that takes you. But remember, you can't undo it.
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And which crayon colour should he use to draw his conclusions?
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Grape, of course!
Re:I'm not an Elon Musk fan (Score:5, Insightful)
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I'm going with a number which was given to me by a friend of mine, who's a doctor: one gagillion.
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Well, if we take the super-rosy estimates based on optimistic interpretations of unreliable data suggesting that far more people have been infected than we've believed, then we can hope that this thing is only as deadly as a normal flu (~0.2% instead of the ~3% that the experts mostly seem to agree is a reasonable estimate).
Optimistic enough for you? Unfortunately it's still very contagious, and without precautions will probably infect most of the population, while the flu only spreads to about 5% in an no
Re: I'm not an Elon Musk fan (Score:2, Interesting)
So the country will just disappear off the map, huh? Just like how the virus is just going to disappear?
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Trump has put all your chips down on commercial activity and saved none for rainy days. Actually I shouldn't blame Trump for this, because no American president has really done anything about it. Other countries have more social programs and can help their citizens weather the storm. Americans are on their own because that's how they want to be, as bizarre as it is.
Re: I'm not an Elon Musk fan (Score:2, Troll)
Please enlighten.
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Re: I'm not an Elon Musk fan (Score:2)
And again, what country are you from tha
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It was. Look at other places which had just as much warning and nowhere near as many deaths because they took action. Let's say Australia for example. Less than 100 deaths. Go on. Feel free to adjust for population differences. Still not going to get anywhere near 60,000 people.
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Re: I'm not an Elon Musk fan (Score:2)
Support it if it makes you feel good. More power to yo
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You have created a country where everyone dies if they don't make money.
That's called nature. Food and shelter don't magically appear. Someone has to work for the food and build the shelter. Even the dumbest animals know this. What's your excuse?
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You just contradicted yourself... do you think people need organization or not? Before you said no, now you say yes.
People need organization for some things and not for others.
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You have created a country where everyone dies if they don't make money. Hurrah for Americans.
What country do you live in where not everyone dies?
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: I'm not an Elon Musk fan (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not a Musk fan. However, we should make rational decisions about this not fear based. That requires currently non-existent information. It *appears* and gut check says the lockdown was a complete waste if the goal was lower total deaths.
The way this thing appears to spread pretty much EVERYONE is going to get it eventually.
Remember, "flatten the curve" does NOT m
Re: I'm not an Elon Musk fan (Score:5, Insightful)
The way this thing appears to spread pretty much EVERYONE is going to get it eventually.
Remember, "flatten the curve" does NOT mean fewer people get ill. It means the same number but over a longer period to avoid overwhelming the healthcare system. At this point, reports are saying the healthcare system has plenty of equipment and empty beds in all but a few very high density places like New York City.
It is true that the major benefit of flattening the curve is to avoid exceeding our capacity to care for patients.
But the area under the flattened curve is also smaller. Measures we take reduce both the number of people who become infected and who die from the disease.
Reasons include
* Some people will be able to delay infection until there is a vaccine or antiviral treatment available
* Improved patient care - we are figuring out how to deal with the ways in which the virus causes mortality and this will continue to reduce the lethality of the virus, even if we never find a vaccine for it
* Herd(ish) immunity. It's really not a given that everyone is going to get the virus. You can be buffered by infection dead-ends. But this only works if people develop immunity in between interactions. If everyone is constantly interacting yes everyone will get it. If it is a slow enough burn we would reach herd immunity and then it would die out. (Especially helpful if we have high-risk individuals quarantined until this happens.)
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People are not dying more. People are dying sooner.
Everybody is eventually going to die. So instead of using the figure "more death" use "reduce live expectancy"
With hard lockdown you're buying some time for some people who would inevitably die because even with ventilator they're either too old o too weak after years of substance abuse (tobacco). As a matter of fact what you're doing is increasing its live expectancy (as opposed to no lockdown)
However with hard lockdown you're also throwing lots of people
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There are documented cases of deaths attributed to COVID-19 that were blatantly due to other causes such as traffic accidents and mind-altering drug overdoses. How widespread that is can only be speculated. There are reports of very substantial government payments for each death recorded as COVID; that creates an economic incentive to over-report.
On the other hand, there are political pressures in some places to under-report (See, we're doing it right by arresting anyone who opens their front door). There's
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There are reports of very substantial government payments for each death recorded as COVID
If that is happening then there should be more than reports, there should be explicit guidance to thousands of doctors to do so which would have been leaked by now. This isn't likely to be credible. And why would a government, trying to end lock down, be promoting an apparently higher level of mortality which undermines it? It doesn't make sense.
Re: I'm not an Elon Musk fan (Score:3)
Explain the death statistics then. It doesn't matter what bucket they are counted in for a minute, just tell us why so many people died last month.
This argument that unrelated deaths are being counted as COVID-19 and therefore there is nothing to see here is so bleach drinking dumb. You have to explain why there is a sudden spike in those OTHER categories then.
Sudden cardiac arrest is now in? Too many chem trails? Bigfoot did it? Ancient alien tomb was unearthed releasing poison gas cloud? Fuck man, w
Re: I'm not an Elon Musk fan (Score:2)
Well yeah, lifting all quarantine measures and letting as many Ameritards die as possible is indeed the best measure for the country, and the entire world.
Then the USA can go a little bit back to sanity.
Re:I'm not an Elon Musk fan (Score:5, Insightful)
No one has a coherent much of anything. We're doing a trolley problem blindfolded and talking ourselves into being the rational one.
Can it be contained? What measures slow it down and to what extent? How much excess death will the current lockdown cause, especially in the third world? To what extent does weather influences R? What are the odds and fallout of a vaccine failure if you use it without any real safety testing? What are the odds of finding a small molecule prophylaxis or treatment which can reduce deaths to a comfortable level? (Remdesivir seems only slightly better than prayer to me.) Do coughs create aerosols? (Science is hardly as cut and dry as WHO&co pretends.)
Most importantly ... how much of the population has been exposed? At least that's a question we will be able to answer. I hope it will show the lockdown was a huge waste of time.
Re:I'm not an Elon Musk fan (Score:5, Insightful)
>I hope it will show the lockdown was a huge waste of time.
We all do, unfortunately there's not yet a lot of evidence to support that belief. Especially not after discovering how many of the tests are incredibly unreliable.
I presume you you mean showing the infection rate is far higher than we believe, and it's thus not nearly as deadly? That seems to be the only ray of hope on the horizon - and it's not that great. Even the most optimistic (data-backed) estimates I've seen put it as at least as deadly as the normal flu, while being far more contagious. So we'd still probably be looking at 10-20x more deaths than to the flu, just because this thing will likely infect 50-100% of the population, instead of the flu's usual 5% or less. Still, a million dead Americans would be positively rosy compared to more conservative estimates.
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So because a dirty, polluting finite ressource is temporarily cheaper, you think it's the end for electric cars?
Re: Can we stop with the musk posting already (Score:2)
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The vast majority of electricity production is ultimately worse for the environment than oil.
Then you have to add on the impact of manufacturing your lithium batteries, and dumping them in a few years or recovering some materials in an expensive (in terms of energy and waste) recycling process. Do you even know what lithium production is doing to South America?
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Time to face reality: Trump is now running against himself—and losing.
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Another Trump will run in 2024.
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John Galt was a failed engineer, a failed cook, and a successful terrorist.
He was a raving lunatic right from the start of the book. I'm glad the book wasn't about him, though, because it was difficult enough to finish as it was.
Elon Musk isn't John Galt, though. He's just a company owner. In Rand-world he'd be Hank Rearden.