Elon Musk is a moron.
He's a man whose forward-thinking ambition combined with his unusual access to resources has propelled him to unimaginable levels of wealth. He's also a man with notable talents in the fields of technology, business management, and (especially) self-promotion.
Unfortunately, talent and intelligence in particular areas do not preclude a person from being a moron in other aspects of life. As we've covered before, there may be no one on Earth who proves this concept as clearly as our newly-minted richest man (actually, he's back down to number two), and Grimes' baby-daddy.
His abject lack of self-awareness regularly gets him into trouble, as when he smashed his dystopian cybertruck live on stage, made a weed joke that nearly got him fired, and reacted to criticism of his interference in the Thai cave rescue by labelling a rescue worker a child rapist and "pedo guy," based on where he lives. But the most painful evidence of Musk's idiocy came in 2020, with his clumsy, self-serving attempts to outsmart epidemiologists on their home turf.
Outside of the swirling vortex of misinformation and sociopathy of the Trump administration, no figure was prominent in the landscape of coronavirus denial as Elon Musk. From his early March pronouncement that "the coronavirus panic is dumb" to his claim two weeks later that new cases in the US would be "close to zero" by April, he staked an early claim in the territory of resisting medical science on the deadly pandemic.
The Tesla and SpaceX CEO had a vested interest in keeping economic activity bustling, and he was seemingly determined to favor his needs over the reality of what we were facing as a society. This point was perhaps best exemplified when Musk insisted on reopening Tesla's Fremont, California factory, in violation of local restrictions, and began pushing for special exemptions.
Not long after, cases of the virus began spreading among workers, one of whom reported to CBS, "I feel abandoned. We all feel abandoned." Meanwhile, Musk continually downplayed the seriousness of the virus and the risk of its spread, making COVID deniers feel as smugly superior as Elon himself, even as his own company's factories were picked out as viral vectors, and COVID cases and deaths mounted nationwide.
Through October, Musk continued to promote Sweden's approach of minimal restrictions in pursuit of widespread exposure yielding herd immunity. But that perspective mysteriously disappeared from Musk's feed around the time Sweden saw a sudden, massive spike in COVID cases and deaths — which is still ongoing.
Nonetheless, even in November — as the US saw its own COVID numbers climbing at a precipitous rate — Musk wasn't done spouting nonsense. In the lead up to SpaceX's second launch with NASA astronauts, Musk tested positive for COVID using a rapid antigen test. He immediately took three more tests, just to make sure, and tested negative twice before receiving a second positive result.
Musk has admitted that he was running a low-grade fever in the days leading up to the tests, but he really wanted to attend the launch at NASA's Kennedy Space Center. So, rather than acknowledging his mild COVID symptoms and doing the basic research to realize that these tests had a high false-negative rate, Musk took to social media to declare that this mixed result was indicative of "something extremely bogus."
Was the problem that Musk had taken a cavalier attitude toward the virus, exposing his workers and ultimately himself? Was he now facing some minimal consequences for his own broken risk assessment and greed?
On the contrary, according to Musk it made more sense to attribute the spike in COVID numbers to fishy false positives. And his replies were predictably full of people using his own skepticism to bolster their dangerous conspiracy theories. A few days later, it barely received notice when Musk confirmed that he "def had cov2."
But all this selfish stupidity is Musk's alone. Despite their shared interests in obscure Art History/Singularity puns and naming children after aircrafts, it has generally been possible to draw a clear line between Elon Musk and his partner, dream pop musician Grimes.
Back in July of 2020, when Musk tweeted "pronouns suck," — in apparent protest of the increased societal attention to preferred pronouns, acknowledging trans and non-binary gender identities — Grimes called him out. In a tweet she has since deleted, she said, "I love you but ... I cannot support hate. Please stop this."
Grimes has referred to herself as being "in a gender neutral space," and expressed resentment at being "categorized as female constantly" — though has not expressed a preference particular pronouns. When, in December, Musk again decided to attack "all these pronouns" as "an esthetic nightmare," Grimes simply shared a link to the LGBTQ Freedom Fund, with the statement "I love this charity!"
Her willingness to see her partner through rose-tinted lenses that somehow lend the anti-union, anti-whistleblower mega-billionaire an ideological resemblance to Bernie Sanders, is patently absurd, but love can make us do crazy things. And Grimes does at least seem to be capable of recognizing when he's being a moron. But that's what makes the Miss Anthropocene musician's recent Instagram Story about contracting COVID particularly disappointing.
Along with a Spotify link to SZA's "Good Days," the story included the announcement that she "finally got COVID" — implying that it was something she was glad to get out of the way, rather than a deadly, contagious virus that warrants serious measures to avoid and contain. The 32 year old added that she was "weirdly enjoying the Dayquil fever dream 2021."
Setting aside the fact that the early days of 2021 have been a fever dream for everyone, the idea of describing your experience with a virus that has killed nearly 2 million people worldwide — including more than 375,000 Americans — in such lighthearted terms seems grossly insensitive. It's not the head-cold that's going around the office.
While many young people experience only mild symptoms of COVID, or none at all, the reality is that thousands of people are dying horrific, gasping deaths every day. It's been the number one cause of death in the US since early December, and the numbers are still trending up. Now more than ever it's a topic that deserves to be treated with care.
It's possible that Grimes really was feverish to the point of being slightly delirious. In which case she may have been trying to put a positive spin on a difficult illness, and we hope she feels better soon. But if she's just having an easy time of it, and decided to spread her breezy attitude — taking a cue from Elon and playing down the direness of the pandemic — then maybe it's time to stop making excuses for her.
We love her music almost as much as we love that there is finally a viable electric car company taking over the market. But if Grimes and Musk aren't willing to take the COVID pandemic seriously, their talents don't make up for their idiocy.
They need to either get on board with the reality of this crisis as hospitals are overflowing, or spend the next 6-8 months shutting their dumbass mouths.