After questioning the reliability of COVID-19 testing, Elon Musk says he likely has a "moderate" case of the novel disease.
The Tesla/SpaceX CEO made the admission via Twitter on Saturday night when he was asked about the symptoms he's been experiencing over the last couple of days. Musk began by claiming he was still "getting wildly different results from different labs," but compared his symptoms to those of a cold.
"... most likely I have a moderate case of covid," he wrote. "My symptoms are that of a minor cold, which is no surprise, since a coronavirus is a type of cold."
He said he was experiencing body aches, coughing and sneezing, as well as some cloudiness.
Musk was one of the first high-profile figures to dismiss the severity of coronavirus and was quite critical of the government-imposed restrictions aimed at curbing its spread. Shortly before the outbreak was declared a pandemic, he suggested the alarm surrounding the disease was overblown: "The coronavirus panic is dumb," he tweeted on March 6.
He also referred to the shelter-at-home orders as as anti-democratic during Tesla's Q1 earnings call back in April.
"I think people are going to be very angry about this and are very angry," he said. "It’s like somebody wants to stay in the house? That’s great, they should be allowed to stay in the house, and they should not be compelled to leave. But to say that they cannot leave their house, and they will be arrested if they do, this is fascist. This is not democratic. This is not freedom. Give people back their goddamn freedom ... I would call it, 'forcibly imprisoning people in their homes' against all their Constitutional rights, in my opinion, and breaking people's freedoms in ways that are horrible and wrong and not why people came to America or built this country."
Earlier this week, Musk revealed he had taken multiple rapid antigen tests that came back with different results. He said two tests came back negative and two others came back positive—all of which were administered by the same nurse on the same day.
