This doctor’s ‘space Karen’ takedown of Elon Musk is out of this world
Spare a thought – sort of – for Elon Musk who was forced to miss his latest SpaceX rocket launch after testing positive for Covid-19.
We say ‘sort of’ because it’s fair to say that Musk wasn’t entirely convinced by the tests, and naturally went on Twitter to say so.
Something extremely bogus is going on. Was tested for covid four times today. Two tests came back negative, two came back positive. Same machine, same test, same nurse. Rapid antigen test from BD.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 13, 2020
Encouraging people not to believe their results is becoming more fashionable these days – just ask Donald Trump – but it struck many people as a very irresponsible thing to say.
Insanely irresponsible tweet.
— Ray [REDACTED] (@RayRedacted) November 13, 2020
And no-one put it better than this doctor.
Rapid antigen tests trade sensitivity for speed. They return a result in <30 minutes, but can only detect COVID-19 when you’re absolutely riddled with it. What’s bogus is that Space Karen didn’t read up on the test before complaining to his millions of followers. pic.twitter.com/a1Snfpm03h
— Emma Bell PhD (@emmabell42) November 14, 2020
This graphs shows the probability of COVID-19 detection for the available tests. Rapid antigen tests (orange) only give low false negative results for a couple of days. Space Karen’s results (2 neg, followed by 2 pos later that day) are completely in line with this. pic.twitter.com/hnX9J1m7Lk
— Emma Bell PhD (@emmabell42) November 14, 2020
— Emma Bell PhD (@emmabell42) November 14, 2020
Boom.
And just a few of the things people were saying about it.
Not wild about the whole Karen thing but Space Karen as a nickname here is inspired. https://t.co/S9nBTuZcaV
— David Baddiel (@Baddiel) November 16, 2020
https://twitter.com/MollyJongFast/status/1328307294094897152?s=20
“Space Karen” has been howling with laughter https://t.co/KVxXhAN3uX
— Janey Godley (@JaneyGodley) November 16, 2020
.@elonmusk demands to speak to the manager! https://t.co/gMS8Edzn0y
— Alternative NOAA (@altNOAA) November 16, 2020
In which Elon Musk’s poor COVID-science fluency leads an epigeneticist to call him “Space Karen.” https://t.co/5W9vyHVNSZ
— Bartley Kives (@bkives) November 16, 2020
An expert. Also ‘Space Karen’ 😆 https://t.co/uVNxTS98oj
— Dr Adam Rutherford (@AdamRutherford) November 16, 2020
https://twitter.com/SpillerOfTea/status/1328272074083864577?s=20
I will never not laugh at Space Karen https://t.co/InvR5sTRMy pic.twitter.com/92vQfIyzHi
— dan hett (@danhett) November 16, 2020
READ MORE
Piers Morgan’s takedown of Matt Hancock over his Covid-19 record is simply blistering
Source Twitter @emmabell42
