— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 13, 2020
What is the general population (no knowledge of symptoms) accuracy of a sars-cov2 PCR test & is it possible to generate a false positive if you simply run enough cycles?
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 13, 2020
Tesla creator Elon Musk says that while also testing negative, he has tested positive for the novel coronavirus, giving a skeptical view of the validity of the procedures.
In a series of tweets early Friday, after getting "mild sniffles & cough & moderate fever" in recent days, Musk said he had contradictory results from rapid "antigen" tests for Covid-19.
There is something incredibly bogus going on. He wrote, "Was screened four times today for covid." "Two tests returned negative, two returned positive. The same computer, the same test, the same nurse."
Musk, who dismissed fears about the pandemic and fought lockdown orders in California earlier this year, said he intended to take the more precise PCR test that had to be submitted for review to a laboratory.
In recent weeks, rapid antigen tests have gained ground due to laboratory backlogs, but they are less prone to small quantities of viruses and are more likely to produce a false negative.
Musk seemed to reject fears about the pandemic in March, saying that "my assumption is that the hysteria would do more damage than the virus."
Two months later, in California, he defied lockdown orders to reopen the assembly plant at Tesla, tempting authorities to arrest him.
For the first time after a successful crew test flight in May, Musk's space company SpaceX was scheduled to launch four astronauts to the International Space Station on Saturday.
For that mission, Musk was in the control room, but NASA chief Jim Bridenstine said Friday that procedure ruled out the involvement at the Kennedy Space Center of anyone who tested positive.
It is our policy for that person to quarantine and self-isolate when someone tests positive for Covid here at the Kennedy Space Center, and across NASA," he said in a press conference."
"So we expect that to happen. And, you know, we're looking at SpaceX to do some appropriate touch tracing."
Since October 31, the astronauts have been in quarantine, and Bridenstine did not want to predict whether if potential contact cases were found, there was a chance of postponing the mission.
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