What Has COVID-19 done to Musk?

If you have been following Indian politics at all in the last 5 years, then you must be no stranger to the words “Fascist” and “Anti-National” right?

Well, but did you ever imagine that they would be used to describe the Coronavirus and the resulting lockdown from it? Well, that just happened.

And no, this was not from some IT cell member or a keyboard warrior with just 4 followers on Twitter ranting his head off, this was from Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX. Musk, who has been widely hailed as the greatest living entrepreneur in the world, with a whole bunch of revolutionary ideas and over 40 billion US$ in net worth.

Source: Wikipedia

Yes, that’s right. The man who took on the entire banking system with PayPal, and won. The man who took on the entire automobile industry with Tesla, and won. The man who wanted to build a tunnel between two cities thousands of miles apart just because he was stuck in traffic. This very guy, on live TV, said that the Coronavirus is fascist.

So, what really happened?

Ever since the Coronavirus has been declared a pandemic, all production activities have stopped due to the lockdown. This has particularly affected Musk and his factories, thereby causing even more delays in production and deliveries than usual. Therefore, Musk has been a huge proponent of “lifting the lockdown for the sake of progress.”

Source: News18

Recently, he said that the lockdown was fascist because it infringed on the rights of the people to move about. He said that staying at home and practicing social distancing must be an option, and forcing people to stay at home is undemocratic, and “not what the founding fathers of the country imagined”

Well, to be honest, I don’t think the Founding Fathers, or anyone for that matter, imagined the Coronavirus at all.

But that’s not all. Musk has also done some pretty other strange things during these two months, and this next one cost Tesla 14 billion dollars on the share market.

On the 1^st of May, Musk tweeted this:

Source: Bitcoin Forum

Within a matter of minutes, the stock price of Tesla fell from 760$ to just above 700$, causing an almost 8% drop. This led to a 14-billion-dollar loss to Tesla.

While this move has been hailed by many as a good thing since it proves that Musk cares about more than just the bottom line, the fact that millions of investors lost a lot of money is no joke, especially since this is not the first time Musk has pulled off something like this.

In December 2019, he had tweeted something similar, and caused a huge drop in the share price of Tesla.

Source: T4U

In the past few weeks, he has also walked out of interviews, been rude to reporters, and digressed entirely from topics to rant about the COVID-19 and how the lockdown is a state-sponsored fascist lockdown designed to turn the country from a democracy to a totalitarian government.

A lot of Musk fanboys have expressed despair at his statements, asking him to “calm down” and “stop behaving like a brat”. One of his fans even went so far as to say, “Musk believes he can get away with anything. The incident of him smoking marijuana in an interview, the Cybertruck window fiasco, and his fanboy cult have given him the impression that he is invincible. However, this is crossing a line. There is no excuse for endangering the safety of the people. There is a thin line between being controversial and becoming a conspiracy theorist, and Musk just crossed it.”

Source: Business Insider

Whatever the case may be, Musk is facing a lot of backlash for his statements, and he needs to either apologize for what he said or he needs to issue an explanation. This could severely hurt his popularity, and that of his company, causing major losses in the long term. Musk needs to grow up and accept that the lockdown is the same for  him as it is for everyone else, and life isn’t fair.

-NK