- $4 has $4 unscientific ideas and
misinformation aboutcoronavirus case numbers and testing since March. - But Musk $4 this month, which prevented him from attending SpaceX's $4.
- Musk then reached out to an epidemiologist to help him understand PCR testing after months of skepticism and speculation.
As SpaceX sent the four astronauts careening towards the International Space Station, Musk was feeling fatigued and had the sniffles. He had tested positive for
Musk $4 his 40 million Twitter followers that he'd been experiencing "mild" symptoms — sniffles, cough, and a slight fever — but that he didn't trust his test results.
"Something extremely bogus is going on," $4 on November 12.
His reasoning was based on inconsistent results from a rapid test made by pharmaceutical giant Becton, Dickinson and Company, or BD. Musk said he tested positive on the first test, then negative on a second, negative on a third, and positive again on a fourth.
"Same machine, same test, same nurse," he wrote. He later criticized BD's test as being "about as useful as a flipping a coin."
When asked by a Twitter user if this testing inconsistency is the reason for the US's major spike in cases, Musk $4: "If it's happening to me, it's happening to others."
His
"The coronavirus panic is dumb," Musk $4 on March 6.
In the case of his own test results, Musk was not acknowledging the Food and Drug Administration's guidance about the antigen test he took. The agency says that in the case of a positive result, antigen tests "are highly accurate, but there is a higher chance of false negatives, so negative results do not rule out infection."
PCR tests, meanwhile, take longer to process but are the gold standard for diagnosis. Musk was still awaiting his PCR results when he started tweeting. He still has not shared those results, but he $4 on November 18 that he "def" had the coronavirus.
In the months preceding his diagnosis, Musk insisted that the virus was $4, that $4 people $4, and that doctors were $4 deaths to COVID-19 instead of other causes. He sent employees back to work at his California Tesla factory $4, which he $4 as "fascist" and "forcible imprisoning." He also predicted the US would be reporting "$4" by the end of April. And he vouched for an approach that would allow mass infection before $4 become available.
But then, just days before Musk's rocket company made history, biological reality seemed to strike the $4. Musk may finally be coming around to the truth of this pandemic.
He did not, however, respond to Business Insider's request for comment.
Elon Musk's anti-lockdown crusade
When Musk prematurely reopened his Tesla factory, the virus came in with workers. Employees tested positive just a few days later, $4 reported, then were told to stay home as their coworkers continued coming in.
Musk's criticism of lockdowns was unwavering. He advocated an approach like Sweden's, which encouraged the elderly to stay at home and implemented higher levels of precaution at nursing homes, but otherwise let life carry on as normal.
"Sweden was right," Musk $4 repeatedly throughout October, sharing graphs showing Swedish death counts at zero.
The idea behind the Swedish policy was to build herd immunity — a protection that populations gain when enough individuals become immune to a virus that the pathogen can no longer spread easily. This is also what could get achieved through mass vaccination.
But soon after Musk's tweets, Sweden began reporting an unprecedented wave of cases and an accompanying surge in deaths. The country's chief epidemiologist, Anders Tegnell, $4 that he'd been wrong in his prediction that autumn case counts would be "quite low" due to the country's no-lockdown policy.
The Swedish government $4 this month, limiting gatherings and telling people to stay home.
In the US, $4 that lockdowns helped prevent as many as 60 million coronavirus infections from March 3 to April 6. $4 estimated that US stay-at-home orders may have prevented 250,000 to 370,000 deaths from March to May.
One analyst $4 that pursuing herd immunity through natural infection in the US could cause $4 by February 2023. $4 calculated a similar toll of 600,000, based on the virus's death rate and the percentage of the population that would need to be infected to reach herd immunity.
'Everybody dies'
In a September interview on the podcast "Sway," Musk told interviewer Kara Swisher that $4, nor want his family to do so. The reason he gave was that he was "not at risk for COVID, nor are my kids."
Musk didn't elaborate further on that stance, and he didn't acknowledge that even if you are healthy, young, and less likely to experience severe symptoms, getting vaccinated can prevent you from spreading the virus to someone more vulnerable.
Musk is not alone in his anti-vaccine sentiments. In a $4 conducted this summer, $4 said they would decline to take a COVID-19 vaccine. A later $4 turned up similar results.
In the same September interview, Musk also argued for the natural-infection path to herd immunity.
"Essentially, the right thing to do would be to not have done a lockdown for the whole country but to have, I think, anyone who's at risk should be quarantined until the storm passes," he said.
Musk didn't note the hundreds of thousands of deaths his preferred approach would cause, nor the countless people who'd be left to suffer $4. Swisher did, though. When she pointed out that many people would perish, Musk responded: "Everybody dies."
Is Musk having a change of heart?
After Musk fell ill, missed his landmark rocket launch, and attacked antigen tests online, something seemed to change in his tweets. Suddenly, he reached out to a coronavirus expert: Michael Mina, an immunologist and epidemiologist at Harvard's TH Chan School of Public Health.
Two days after announcing and questioning his test results, Musk asked Mina on Twitter what he thought the threshold should be for a PCR test to be considered positive.
"If I'm asking the wrong question, what is a better question?" Musk added.
—Elon Musk (@elonmusk) $4
"Great question," Mina replied, launching into a seven-tweet response. He explained that a rapid antigen test like the one Musk used can be your "best friend" if you want to find out whether you're an immediate danger to others. Mina invited Musk to send him a direct message for a more detailed explanation.
"You're a scientist and it would be GREAT if you could help inform the world of the right answer to your question," Mina said. "So much confusion abounds."
It's not known whether Musk took Mina up on that offer, but he later $4 their conversation, recommending it to anyone "curious about rona testing."