Bill Gates Quipped Elon Musk To Take Care Of Electric Cars Instead Of Spreading COVID-19 Hoaxes

JAKARTA - Bill Gates has criticized the controversial statements about the COVID-19 pandemic that is often made by Tesla CEO, Elon Musk. According to Bill Gates, Elon Musk should stay focused on his area of expertise rather than spreading lies about the coronavirus or COVID-19.

This was conveyed by Gates while attending an event on CNBC "Squawk Box,". At that time, he responded to Musk's comments about COVID-19 on the social network Twitter, which was outrageous.

"Elon's positioning is to maintain a high rate of outrageous comments. He doesn't get involved much in vaccines. He makes a great electric car. And his rocket works fine. So he's allowed to say these things. I hope he doesn't confuse the area- areas where he is not involved too much, "said Gates, as quoted from the Futurism page, Thursday, July 30.

Not only that, Gates also mentioned social media platforms that are always quick to spread misinformation. "When you let people communicate, you have to deal with the fact that certain flimsy things that are very exciting spread very quickly compared to the truth."

Gates' comments came after billionaire Musk spoke misleadingly about COVID-19, spread falsehoods, and expressed doubts over the severity of the pandemic in the United States (US) even as cases have increased nationwide.

"There are lots of false positives for C19 (COVID-19) messing up the numbers. Even a test with a false positive rate of 5 percent (in fields, not labs) would show up as ~ 17 million cases of fake C19 even if it didn't actually exist," Musk tweeted on 30 June.

At the time that the tweet was published, 48,000 new positive COVID-19 cases were announced in the US, breaking a one-day record at the time. According to an analysis reported by The New York Times, more than 4.3 million people have been infected with COVID-19 in the US while 148,400 have died as of July 28.

These are not the only comments Tesla and SpaceX bosses have on the US pandemic. In April, he called protective measures such as quarantine unreasonable.

"Frankly, I would call it the forced imprisonment of people in their homes against all, their constitutional right, in my opinion. It violates people's freedoms in a terrible and wrong way and is not why they came to America or built this country," Musk said.

In addition, Musk also tweeted on March 19 with a false statement that "children are inherently immune" to the coronavirus. The tweet also drew controversy.

The father of one child also praised Texas for allowing businesses to open their businesses at the end of April. Even though the country later became a red zone in cases of the corona virus.

"Bravo Texas!" he tweeted along with a link to the Texas Tribune's April 29 story about restaurants, shops and other businesses being allowed to reopen. The tweet came after Tesla had to abandon plans to bring employees back to work at the Fremont facility.