MEAWW.COM / NEWS / HUMAN INTEREST

Elon Musk mocked as 'Space Karen' after being forced to watch SpaceX launch from home after catching Covid-19

A Twitter trend saw people mocking the billionaire for previously downplaying the seriousness of the virus

SpaceX CEO, Elon Musk, was forced to watch his company's historic rocket launch from home after he was tested positive for the novel coronavirus. SpaceX’s Dragon capsule took four astronauts into orbit on Sunday night, November 15, from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, marking the firm's first crewed mission to the International Space Station (ISS). Tesla CEO's Covid-19 diagnosis, however, soon turned into a Twitter trend where people called him "Space Karen," mocking the billionaire for previously downplaying the seriousness of the virus.

Musk, who is generally present for all major launches, did not attend Sunday's launch after he received two positive coronavirus tests. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) prohibits covid positive people from entering their facilities regardless of their social position. Nasa administrator Jim Bridenstine, before the launch, said: "When somebody tests positive for Covid, here at the Kennedy Space Center and across Nasa it is our policy for that person to quarantine and self isolate."

Musk also appeared to cast doubt on the legitimacy of Covid testing kits last week, claiming that he had tested both positive and negative for virus on the same day. He took to Twitter to write: "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.” He later added that he “most likely" had a moderate case of Covid-19.

Shortly after Musk's tweet, a bioinformatics expert, Dr. Emma Bell, responded to the SpaceX founder, calling him "Space Karen" for not understanding the science behind rapid tests: "Rapid antigen tests trade sensitivity for speed. They return a result in <30 minutes, but can only detect COVID-19 when you're absolutely riddled with it. What's bogus is that Space Karen didn't read up on the test before complaining to his millions of followers."

Bell further shared a graph explaining: "This graphs shows the probability of COVID-19 detection for the available tests. Rapid antigen tests (orange) only give low false negative results for a couple of days. Space Karen's results (2 neg, followed by 2 pos later that day) are completely in line with this."

Soon after their tweet, other users quickly caught on to "Space Karen" and shared how Musk had previously downplayed Covid-19 and was now afflicted with the disease. One user wrote: "SPACE KAREN!! I don’t understand how his brilliance comes to such a screeching halt. Elon should be staying in his lane and out of anything relating to public health or medicine." Another said: "Space Karen. I agree with Emma. It's incredibly irresponsible to pander to COVID conspiracy and undermine testing. Especially when you are regarded in mainstream as a man of science and engineering. I fuck with a lot of things Elon does, but he could do so much better here."

Musk, in March, had declared that "the coronavirus pandemic is dumb." Since then, over 11 million people have been infected with a virus and nearly a quarter of a million people have died from the virus in the US alone, according to Johns Hopkins data.