Elon Musk's tweet on coronavirus outbreak sees mixed responses from Twitterati

Tesla CEO Elon Musk clarified his views regarding the coronavirus outbreak after calling the panic over the epidemic “dumb” on Twitter.

Musk on Friday had tweeted, “coronavirus panic is dumb.” The tweet garnered mixed responses.

Musk further clarified his stance on Twitter after a user (@FxzzOnTheBeat) asked the SpaceX chief about the reason why he thought the panic was unnecessary.

“I feel the same, but what is your reason for thinking why @elonmusk ?” he tweeted.

“Virality of C19 is overstated due to conflating diagnosis date with contraction date & over-extrapolating exponential growth, which is never what happens in reality. Keep extrapolating & virus will exceed mass of known universe!” Musk replied.

The main reason to not panic, according to Musk, is the fatality rate of the virus.

“Fatality rate also greatly overstated. Because there are so few test kits, those who die with respiratory symptoms are tested for C19, but those with minor symptoms are usually not. Prevalence of coronaviruses & other colds in general population is very high!” Musk further said.

Musk’s oversimplification, however, was met with more questions on the micro-blogging platform.

Another Twitter user Pranay Pathole (@PPathole) countered Musk’s response.

“The real issue of this virus is that the rate of survival is very dependent on medical services not being overrun. If you have a fifth of people ending up in critical care there is no doubt that some people in Wuhan died mainly due to not getting on a ventilator in time,” he replied to Musk’s tweet.

To this, the Tesla CEO replied, “Ships with a lot of people & limited medical facilities are a serious issue.”

Tech giants across the globe including Google, Apple, Facebook, Twitter and Microsoft have taken precautionary measures including postponing events, sending care packages to employees in China and allowing their employees to work from home in order to curb the spread of COVID-19.

The number of novel coronavirus cases in the world stood at 105,836, including 3,595 deaths, across 95 countries on Sunday.