"'Ridiculous Number': Elon Musk Doubts Accuracy Of COVID-19 Test Results"

"Elon Musk has expressed doubts about the accuracy of COVID-19 tests, saying that people who test positive should get another test. The Tesla and SpaceX founder has repeatedly downplayed the severity of the pandemic and voiced his discomfort, even dissent, with social distancing guidelines and shelter-in-place orders. 'There are a ridiculous number of false positive C19 tests, in some cases ~50%,' Musk has tweeted. 'False positives scale linearly with [the number] of tests.' It wasn’t clear which data Musk was referring to, although the CDC warned last month that serologic antibody tests, which determine whether a person has been infected with COVID-19 in the past, might be wrong up to half the time. There is no such thing as a 100-percent accurate test, and the prevalence rate (the portion of new cases occurring within a period of time) of a virus plays a big role in the eventual number of false and accurate results... Elon Musk has consistently downplayed the virality of the outbreak in the United States, saying at the very onset of the pandemic that 'the coronavirus panic is dumb'... Musk has also decried shelter-in-place orders as 'fascist' and threatened to move Tesla out of California after local authorities ordered him not to reopen the company’s production plant in Fremont. He very publicly disobeyed and still reopened the plant; the authorities then caved in after Musk presented a virus prevention and control plan for the site..."

There are a ridiculous number of false positive C19 tests, in some cases ~50%. False positives scale linearly with # of tests. This is a big part of why C19 positive tests are going up while hospitalizations & mortality are declining. Anyone who tests positive should retest.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 29, 2020

Give people their freedom back! https://t.co/iG8OYGaVZ0

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 29, 2020