Bill Gates takes a swipe at Elon Musk’s virus theories
Bill Gates couldn’t hold his tongue when asked about the coronavirus conspiracy theories endorsed by Elon Musk.
He is the original mild-mannered tech billionaire turned philanthropist, a world away from his brasher successors and their self-solicited controversies.
Yet even Bill Gates could not hold his tongue when asked about the coronavirus conspiracy theories endorsed by the Tesla billionaire Elon Musk, suggesting that his “outrageous” comments were merely for show.
Mr Musk has courted controversy throughout the outbreak with a series of unscientific conjectures, doubting the severity of the pandemic and condemning lockdown orders as “fascist.”
He has claimed, without foundation, that children are immune, suggested that tests produce too many false positives and threatened to sue local authorities in California for making Tesla workers stay home from work.
We’re seeing field false positives much higher than lab false positives, in range of 5% to 10%. Article says testing went from 100k to 600k, which means a 6-fold increase in false positives. My guess is most cases, especially “no symptomsâ€, are false positives.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 3, 2020
Only a few months ago Mr Gates was the object of Mr Musk’s scorn after revealing that he had bought a Porsche Taycan and not one of Tesla’s premium electric cars. Mr Musk said that the Microsoft founder had always been “underwhelming”.
Mr Gates, however, knows his vaccines, having set up Gavi, the global vaccine alliance, two decades ago and pledging $1.6 billion last month for its continued work, including on distributing a potential coronavirus vaccine.
As the victim of a series of coronavirus-related conspiracy theories, he had little time for Mr Musk’s thoughts.
“Elon’s position is to maintain a high level of outrageous comments,” Mr Gates told the business channel CNBC. “He’s not much involved in vaccines. He makes a great electric car. And his rockets work well. So he’s allowed to say these things.
“I hope that he doesn’t confuse areas he’s not too involved in too much.”
Mr Musk has form for weighing into areas outside his expertise. His offer to build a submarine to extract trapped members of a Thai football team from a cave invited derision from a British rescuer, who subsequently sued Mr Musk for calling him a “paedo guy” on Twitter.
In between tweets about the pandemic in May, Mr Musk questioned the high price of Tesla stock, sending it plunging and wiping billions off shareholders’ accounts.
The rumor that Bill Gates & I are lovers is completely untrue
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 30, 2020
Mr Gates took up his philanthropic role after leaving Microsoft, arguing that he could only commit to giving away his entire fortune when he had the time to manage the process full time.
In the past week Mr Musk has revived a long-running feud with Jeff Bezos, the Amazon founder, over their rival space ambitions and has been accused in a London courtroom by Johnny Depp of beginning an affair with the actress Amber Heard when she was still married to the Pirates of the Caribbean star.
Responding to the Gates interview, Mr Musk tweeted: “The rumours that Bill Gates and I are lovers are completely untrue.”
The Times
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