I won’t deny that the quarantine and lockdown is making some of us a little stir-crazy. Having to stay inside with only limited outside activity, all the places of entertainment closed indefinitely and more are bound to get on anyone’s nerves.
But at the same time, I’m quite happy to note that many people are willing to bear with it if it means the safety of their and other people’s health.
However, there are still quite many people ranting useless things online and provoking people into taking dangerous steps. Just a few weeks ago, we saw anti-lockdown protests being carried out in the USA where it even brought nurses on the road to try and stop so many people from collecting in one place.
As if that was not enough, Elon Musk, someone I used to think was an intelligent person, has been going on social media rants for quite some time.
In his latest one, he basically called the lockdown, which is quite necessary to break the chain of contamination, forcible imprisonment of people.
Should Elon Musk Have Said This?
A few days ago it was reported that during an earnings call (a video or telephone conference where a public company goes over their financial results in a reporting period) Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla called the stay-at-home orders as “fascist.”
On the call, Musk said that “So the expansion of the shelter in place or as frankly I would call it forcibly imprisoning people in their homes, against all their constitutional rights, but that’s my opinion, and breaking people’s freedoms in ways that are horrible and wrong, and not why people came to America or built this country. What the f—. Excuse me. It’s outrage, it’s an outrage. It will cause great harm not just to Tesla, but to many companies. And while Tesla will weather the storm there are many small companies that will not,”
Musk also said, “I think people are going to be very angry about this and are very angry. It’s like somebody wants to stay in the house? That’s great, they should be allowed to stay in the house, and they should not be compelled to leave. But to say that they cannot leave their house, and they will be arrested if they do, this is fascist. This is not democratic. This is not freedom. Give people back their goddamn freedom.”
But it seems that this rant and anger is not out of any goodwill of the heart, but because the lockdown is negatively affecting his company Tesla and its production and selling.
Apparently he was quoted as saying that, “I think we are a bit worried about not being able to resume production in the Bay Area and that should be identified as a serious risk. We only have two car factories now, one in Shanghai and one in the Bay Area,” in response to the Bay Area’s decision to have shelter-in-place.
Originally they had planned to keep the factory open even despite the lockdown orders but their plans were foiled when the Alameda county where the factory is located did not deem it as an essential business.
Read More: Was Tesla Cybertruck’s Shatterproof Glass Window Breaking During Launch A Clever Marketing Strategy By Elon Musk?
Not The First Time For Musk
This is not the first time that Musk has spoken openly about how a lockdown is not needed and downplaying the seriousness of this coronavirus pandemic.
Praising Texas
On 29th April, he even tweeted out in praise of Texas since the state had recently lifted some of the pandemic restrictions in the region, writing “Bravo Texas!”
He also replied to a user saying that, businesses should “reopen with care & appropriate protection, but don’t put everyone under de facto house arrest.”
His comments have actually brought backlash from not just doctors and medical experts but also fans of Musk and even pop star Ariana Grande’s mother, who called his statements “incredibly irresponsible” while asking people to boycott Tesla.
Downplaying The Coronavirus Situation
On 31st January 2020, he tweeted out in reply to a user asking if coronavirus was worse than the flu that, “There is considerable conflation of diagnosis & contraction of ‘corona’. Actual virality is much lower than it would seem. I think this will turn out to be comparable to other forms of influenza. World War Z it is not.”
He later clarified that he “meant to say other forms of ‘the cold,’ not influenza.”
Then in March, in a tweet that’s gotten more than 1.5 million likes, he said that “The coronavirus panic is dumb,” while many countries across the world were locking down, shutting down travel and Italy was dealing with over 9,000 reported deaths due to the pandemic.
On 16th March, in another helpful (read: useless) tweet, he talked about how maybe chloroquine could be a good thing to treat coronavirus and then added that “*Hydroxychloroquine probably better.”
He followed it up by posting how he was given chloroquine while he was suffering from malaria and that it might be “better than nothing.”
Image Credits: Google Images
Sources: CNBC, CNN, Business Insider
Find the blogger @chirali_08
This post is tagged under: Elon Musk tweets, silly, lockdown, forced, views on coronavirus, covid-19, texas, tesla, coronavirus dumb, forcible imprisonment of people, influenza, flu, quarantine
