Tuesday, March 17, 2020

Elon Musk--The Doubting Thomas of the Pandemic Drama?

Some  celebrities and athletes have contracted the coronavirus. Those stories seem implausible. The very low rate of infection as of now, coupled with tiny number of celebrities in the general population means it's pretty unlikely any of them would be infected, let alone several. Even if their way of life made them 10x more likely to get infected than average, the odds of any of them getting the disease would still be tiny.

I think Elon Musk is the Doubting Thomas of the pandemic drama. He's publicly laughing it up about how unlikely his employees are to get sick. If he were a real engineer, not an actor playing a scripted role, he'd take a math-based approach to the spread of the disease. Since the spread is exponential, the probability of getting sick increases with time, and obviously, and with crowd density. Since those data aren't really available in the US, a prudent man would err on the side of caution.

My guess is he's one of the actors in the drama, and he'll get sick, then provide first hand testimony of his "experience".

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