Elon Musk Calls Coronavirus Panic "Dumb"

Elon Musk is not on board with instilling fear into the public about the coronavirus, calling the whole panic surrounding the outbreak "dumb." Health experts and government officials have been urging the public to take the appropriate measures to prevent furthering the spread of the novel coronavirus, COVID-19, as there are now 105,518 confirmed cases of the virus worldwide across 97 countries and territories. More than 3,500 deaths have occurred, and thousands of people have been quarantined. As a result, tons of major events like festivals, concerts, and film premieres have been cancelled.

However, Elon Musk seems to believe that we shouldn't be so concerned about the deadly disease. On Friday, the Tesla CEO denounced the public hysteria surrounding the epidemic via Twitter, writing, "The coronavirus panic is dumb."

Less than 24 hours after it was posted, the tweet has garnered a whopping 1.3 million likes, 275.6K retweets, and 32K replies. Elon was slammed by many users for minimizing the severity of the epidemic, calling him out for his lack of medical expertise and the protections his wealth offers him.

Ironically, Tesla's Shanghai factory was temporarily shut down at the end of January due to concerns surrounding coronavirus, before reopening on February 10th. The Tesla headquarters are located in California, where there are now 69 confirmed cases of coronavirus. While other tech companies like Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Twitter have asked employees to work from home in an attempt to prevent the spread of the virus, it is unclear if Tesla has taken the same precautions with its workers.