Elon Musk and John McAfee have once again spoken out against panic caused by the Covid19 coronavirus pandemic.
In particular, John McAfee posted a tweet quoting a Buzzfeed article in which Elon Musk stresses that the risk of dying from the virus is overestimated.
We need more people like El8n Musk
Yo tell the statistucal truth about Coronavirus.Yes!!!
Your chances of dying in a car crash on the way home are 100 times greater than dying from Coronavirus!!!
WTF is wrong with our Government!!!!! pic.twitter.com/VW04bSoKTe
— John McAfee (@officialmcafee) March 16, 2020
Musk, in fact, would have told workers who have a higher probability of dying in a car accident than as a result of Covid19, and that indeed this probability would be considerably higher.
Sure, in the current state of affairs, i.e. after the restrictive measures taken by the various governments of the countries most affected by the pandemic, the risk of being infected by Covid19 is relatively low, and given that the mortality rate of this disease seems to be around 4% on average, the actual risk of death for the average citizen is ultimately very low.
It is sufficient to mention, for example, that in China, out of 1.4 billion people, only about 80,000 were infected, which is much less than one per thousand of the population, and less than 4,000 died, although this is mainly due to the powerful restrictive measures taken by the government.
Therefore, panic seems totally unjustified as long as government countermeasures are sufficient and effective, however, not all governments seemed so determined in their attempt to contain the spread as much as possible.
To date, for example, the US has four times fewer inhabitants than China, with almost 5,000 infected and growing rapidly, hence, for now, the countermeasures in the US do not seem particularly effective.
What Elon Musk says is technically true, since the numbers of people involved in road accidents are much higher, including the number of fatalities.
