Elon Musk tests positive for Covid-19 but calls test ‘bogus’ | Hacker News Reader

Elon Musk tests positive for Covid-19 but calls test ‘bogus’

latimes.com

12 pointsmartinlaz7 comments

It's not funny that even four tests can't give you a conclusive result. He should've taken 5?

At this point the testing infrastructure around covid19 is just a money printing enterprise. Just like you can't have a scientific discussion around covid19 anymore, you can't have one around testing either. I'm expecting enormous amounts of fudging and 8-ball diagnostics.

If you want scientific discussion there is plenty of it to be had.

I recommend the podcast 'This Week in Virology' [1]. Every week they have a doctor on to discuss his experience in the hospital treating patients and with studies for 30 minutes or so and then they also have several academic virologists discuss recent papers such as this one showing how Covid likely killed a healthy 35 year old with a 3 month old baby by damaging her heart[2].

They also talk about other viruses and virus related news which is fascinating.

Musk is, as usual, willfully ignorant of science and should be ignored (or avoided entirely at the moment given he's potentially contagious)

1. https://www.microbe.tv/twiv/

2. https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-95587/v1

From what I understand the antigen test can give false negatives. So in his case he tested positive twice it would indicate he has it.

It's a common misconception that a flaky test can generate more confidence by being rerun

A test with a 50% chance of being wrong isn't a test

This just seems like a shitshow waiting to unravel. First he took a quick but unreliable test, and when it didn't show what he wanted rather than take a more reliable test he just decided to take the less reliable test 3 more times and then spread bullshit on social media. He's currently describing cold like symptoms, at best he doesn't have covid which will probably result in more bullshit on social media about how covid is basically the common cold. At worst he tests positive, has a mild case, (which the vast majority of people get) and then decide that his N=1 experience is a peer reviewed study on coronavirus and spreads bullshit on social media about how it's no big deal.

He did take a PCR test. The results aren't back yet.

And (assuming he's positive) it's news to me that the antigen tests have such a high false negative rate.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com