“
Elon’s position is to maintain a high level of outrageous comment, he is not heavily involved in vaccines. Makes a great electric car. And their rockets work well. Then you are allowed to say these things. I hope he doesn’t confuse areas that he’s not too involved in. ‘
“
That is Microsoft MSFT,
co-founder Bill Gates explaining to CNBC why Tesla TSLA,
Chief Elon Musk should perhaps focus on his work and let the experts focus on his.
Musk has sparked controversy since the coronavirus broke out in the U.S., suggesting that the deaths have been over-counted and that the blockages were unnecessary. He also called California’s approach to combating the coronavirus “fascist” and pulled an F-bomb from a politician.
Gates noted that facts travel slowly through social media compared to misinformation, posing a challenge for Facebook FB,
and Twitter TWTR,
.
“When you let people communicate, you have to deal with the fact that certain wrong things that are very exciting can spread very quickly compared to the truth. And we’ve always seen that with vaccines, ”Gates, who has been the subject of conspiracy theories, told CNBC. “To the point where these media companies can see what is being said on their platform and take things that are absolutely wrong and get rid of those things or slow them down, that is very difficult.”
Here is a clip from the interview:
Meanwhile, the number of cases in the US increased to 4.29 million and the death toll reached 148,056. Texas became the fourth state with more than 400,000 cases, joining California, Florida, and New York. The global count of confirmed cases of COVID-19 rose to 16.5 million on Tuesday, according to data added by Johns Hopkins University, while the death toll rose to 654,327.
However, Gates offered an optimistic version of the interview.
“You can see the therapeutic benefit faster than the protective benefit,” he said. “So I think there is a good chance that we will have a substantial reduction in the death rate by the end of the year.”
However, he admitted that he is “concerned” that the public is concerned about the safety of the first vaccine.
“Hopefully they see the facts, understand the values of the people they are thinking about and understand that we are in this together and that we need to protect each other with masks and, eventually, collective immunity with a vaccine,” he said.
Looking at the stock market on Tuesday, Tesla shares opened lower as the Dow DJIA,
, S&P SPX,
and Nasdaq COMP,
everything drifted to red.
.
