Earlier, this week the global COVID-19 death toll reached one million. And yet, despite the alarming stats, Tesla founder and CEO Elon Musk says he won't be taking a coronavirus vaccine if it becomes available - and neither will his children.
At the least, those were the claims he made when he was invited as a guest on the New York Times opinion podcast, Sway.
Speaking to host Kara Swisher, the vehicle tycoon said, “I’m not at risk, neither are my kids.”
This is the incredibly awkward moment Elon Musk’s bulletproof Cybertruck has its supposedly shatterproof windows smashed:
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During the appearance, Musk referred to self-isolation as a “no-win situation” that has “diminished my faith in humanity.” Per RT, Musk had at one pointed said that COVID lockdowns are “unethical” and “de facto house arrest”.
The SpaceX founder suggested that instead of insisting that everyone self-isolate regardless of the state of their own health, that “anyone who is at risk” should be “quarantined until the storm passes.”
Shockingly, when Swisher said that an even higher death toll could result from choosing not to engage in social distancing, Musk's rather blasé response to her criticism was that “everybody dies.”
According to the 49-year-old, SpaceX “didn’t skip a day” throughout the whole pandemic. “We had national security clearance because we were doing national security work,” he said. “We sent astronauts to the Space Station and back.”
Back in March, Musk tweeted to his 39 million followers that the "coronavirus panic is dumb". And during the podcast, he talked about Bill Gates' reaction to his own response to the pandemic.
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So what exactly did Gates say? Well, speaking to CNBC, the Microsoft founder highlighted what he believed was the billionaire's ignorance about vaccines, saying that he hoped that the SpaceX head “doesn’t confuse areas he’s not involved in too much.”
“Gates said something about me not knowing what I was doing,” Musk explained during the podcast. “It’s like, ‘Hey, knucklehead, we actually make the vaccine machines for CureVac, that company you’re invested in.'”
This is in reference to the machinery that Tesla manufactures for German biopharmaceutical company CureVac.