SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has to enter quarantine despite conflicting test results showing him either positive or negative for COVID-19, according to NASA.
On Friday, Musk tweeted he'd been tested four times Thursday using rapid COVID-19 antigen tests from Becton, Dickinson and Co. Surprisingly, there were two negative results and two positive findings.
"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," tweeted Musk.
Whatever the true result, NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine argued Musk should be in quarantine and SpaceX should be attempting to determine who might have come into contact with Musk, according to NASA policies.
SpaceX and its ground crews are now preparing for Sunday's launch of the Crew-1 Dragon spacecraft named "Resilience" that will blast-off Saturday evening three Americans and one Japanese astronaut in the first manned space launch from the United States since 2011.
It's now known if this mission will be affected by the news. The focus of NASA's concern is the SpaceX ground crews overseeing the launch, especially the mission control personnel that have worked closely with Trump before the launch. SpaceX's mission control center is located at the company's headquarters in Hawthorne, California.
It's not clear when Musk was last in contact with key SpaceX or NASA personnel that will oversee the Crew-1 launch mission.
There's also concern the mission's four astronauts might be at risk from the virus. NASA, however, quashed those concerns, saying the four astronauts continue to follow pre-flight quarantine rules to ensure they don't take an illness into space where viruses and bacteria can rapidly spread in the International Space Station.
The contradictory findings inflamed Musk's already well-known skepticism about COVID-19. Epidemiologists, however, are well aware rapid antigen tests can be inaccurate and generate false negative. The tests can also yield false-positive results, but these types of cases are rare.
Musk's contradictory test results might mean he's either at the start or end of infection and has a minute amount of the virus in his system for the test to detect.
Musk later tweeted he's awaiting the results of a PCR test. These tests normally take a day or more to return results but are far more accurate. It's also unclear why Musk was tested four times in only one day.
In the past, Musk has railed against stay-at-home and lockdown orders; said kids are immune from the coronavirus and last April blasted California's stay-at-home order as "fascist" in nature. "Give people back their goddamn freedom," he said.
Musk even went further in June when he tweeted: "There are a ridiculous number of false positive C19 tests, in some cases ~50%. False positives scale linearly with # of tests. This is a big part of why C19 positive tests are going up while hospitalizations & mortality are declining. Anyone who tests positive should retest."
The conflicting antigen tests likely confirmed some of his skeptical views about COVID-19.
