A description of Zaphod from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy reminds me of Elon:<p>"He attacked everything in life with a mixture of extraordinary genius and naive incompetence and it was often difficult to tell which was which."
Read his whole comment, he's actually suggesting kids stay away from the elderly. He's not saying "kids are immune, let them do whatever." He's saying the opposite. They're basically not going to be showing as sick, and essentially make the best carriers.<p>It was a tweet...you all can read that far at least.<p>Edit: also, the headline (both here and on bbc.com) have "child immunity" in quotes, which are two words he did not say. He said, "Kids are essentially immune, but elderly with existing conditions are vulnerable." Yes, you could twist it around and say it was on the topic of 'child immunity', but it was put in quotes directly next to his name and was designed to inflame.
During January the official line from the WHO was that there was limited transmission between people. Should Twitter have been removing any tweets which contradicted the WHO's position at this time under the 'misinformation' rules? I think it is important people are able to express opinions that contradict the 'official' knowledge.
Elon's dumb tweets about coronavirus are a great example of the non-transferrability of expertise. He is a great engineer in many areas and a great founder and visionary business leader (in the Jobs mold), but seems to have major issues understanding epidemiology and public health.<p>The assumption that expertise is transferrable is probably one of the biggest fallacies in the public discourse.<p>Jobs displayed a similar blind spot around medicine, likely killing himself by attempting to treat severe cancer with alt-med crackpottery. Then of course there are all the celebrities that gave us all that nonsense plus the anti-vax movement. Medicine seems to be a popular area for this. For whatever reason when a person gets rich or famous they seem to develop the need to play amateur doctor with zero training and zero willingness to actually undertake the requisite study. Maybe you know you've arrived when you develop a strong desire to be a medical crank.
this guy went from...having almost religious love of the people, to...just a lot of facepalming. I feel like dr. fauci now.<p>you're smart, mr. musk, but in SOME thing, not all things. his entitled ass needs to learn that sometimes you need to just stay in your lane, man. stay in your lane
So irresponsible. Infection rates are the same. Symptoms are just mild in most cases. He should be ashamed of himself, but he won't be.<p>[0] "Epidemiological Characteristics of 2143 Pediatric Patients With 2019 Coronavirus Disease in China" <a href="https://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/pediatrics/early/2020/03/16/peds.2020-0702.full.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/pediatrics/ea...</a><p>[1] "Epidemiology and Transmission of COVID-19 in Shenzhen China: Analysis of 391 cases and 1,286 of their close contacts" <a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.03.20028423v2" rel="nofollow">https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.03.20028423v...</a>