Elon Musk shares controversial meme on COVID-19 on Twitter, sparks debate

Tech mogul and CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, Elon Musk has always been in the public eye for his revolutionary technological endeavours, and he also has an avid social media presence as he frequently shares his tech ideas and memes, which garner a lot of engagement across various handles. Recently Musk shared a meme, which some might consider contentious on COVID-19, that is making the rounds on the internet.

Taking to his Twitter handle on Thursday, Musk shared an image, that depicts two characters, one is a normal man while another is someone who has vaccine needles all over his body, also wearing a face mask, while a callout can be seen, depicting both of them are thinking. The callout reads, "Why aren't they dead yet." The Tweet was posted on December 30 and ever since, it has garnered more than 3 lakh likes and over 50 thousand retweets and the numbers keeps surging.

People shared their own memes

Netizens took to the comment section to reply to the tech mogul with their own versions of the meme. One Twitter user shared the same meme featuring a different scenario and wrote, "This meme was quite the opposite of reality, so I fixed it for you to be the most realistic possible. You're welcome. And please stop giving the antivaxx your approval or Tesla stock goes."

Some also censured Musk for his controversial post. One netizen wrote, "I guess, Musk is now completely gone. Sad. I had hoped he’d get to Mars before losing it completely."  Meanwhile, another user wrote, "I've had 3 jabs now… I even trained as a vaccinator… but I don’t think I’ll have 7 of them if they just keep adding booster after booster. I was in for a penny in for a pound in the beginning but at some point, I’m going to just wait for a better vaccine that lasts longer I think."

Elon Musk's other controversial post

This is not the first time Elon Musk has made controversial remarks on COVID-19. According to Sputnik, the Tesla CEO was heavily chastised at the start of the pandemic for stating that US officials had overcounted COVID-19 deaths and went so far to predict that the country would have near to zero instances by April 2020.

Image: @elonmusk/Twitter, AP