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Is Elon Musk Covid-19 positive? Tesla owner's tweet about virus test irregularities labeled 'irresponsible'

'Something extremely bogus is going on. Was tested for covid four times today. Two tests came back negative, two came back positive,' Musk wrote

Tesla owner Elon Musk does not trust Covid-19 tests and he made it abundantly clear on Twitter on Friday, November 13. But it also led people to question why he was getting tested in the first place if he was feeling symptoms of the infection and so on. 

"Something extremely bogus is going on. Was tested for covid four times today. Two tests came back negative, two came back positive. Same machine, same test, same nurse. Rapid antigen test from BD," he tweeted. Immediately one concerned user asked him, "Hmmmm.... Are you feeling any symptoms?" to which replied, "Symptoms of a typical cold. Nothing unusual so far," suggesting that he might be asymptomatic. Another user asked, "Could this be why we’ve been seeing such a major spike?" Musk responded, saying, "If it’s happening to me, it’s happening to others. I’m getting PCR tests from separate labs. Results will take about 24 hours."

His tweet was slammed by a senior producer at MSNBC, Kyle Griffin, as "an irresponsible" tweet. However, there were others who agreed with the SpaceX creator's post. "Antigen tests are pretty hit and miss depending on who makes them. This is pretty common knowledge," one of them wrote, while another commented, "You have to take 42 tests now for the universe to balance back out." A third remarked, "Lol. Nurses have sent swabs with no person being tested and they came back positive. Other countries have tested fruits and cardboards and have came back positive. Bogus would be a huge understatement. Also I’m coming over for thanksgiving....we gotta talk about the rocket on 12/21" 

"I'm a diagnostic pathologist. There are issues with testing at the moment. The rapid antigen test is more likely to underdiagnose than overdiagnose so you should indeed get checked with PCR. However, PCR errors are causing a false positive pseudoepidemic," someone else wrote. A person said, "I’ve heard those rapid test machines can be quite inaccurate. I’d just get one from the county health dept and see what it says." Another commented, "The accuracy rate for antigen testing is 50% so those results are as expected, that’s why deep swab microbial tests are recommended."

We previously reported that Musk called for an end to the coronavirus lockdown in the United States following his company's stock rebounding 100 percent in April after reaching a low point on March 16. The billionaire called on states to get back to work and reopen businesses in a barrage of tweets including, "FREE AMERICA NOW." His calls for reopening America came after reports in the same month that Tesla was asking some of its employees to resume work at their California auto plant, despite health measures not being lifted in the state.

Tesla initially stated that it planned to resume operations on May 4. Following lockdown protests in many places, some states have begun easing Covid-19 restrictions. Thousands have remained defiant to social distancing guidelines while demanding governments reopen businesses so they can get back to work. On the other hand, healthcare workers have argued that it's not safe to reopen businesses and public places without mass testing provisions in place, especially since the rate of confirmed cases of Covid-19 has not decreased as much as they would have liked.