Why Elon Musk’s tweet on the Taliban is going viral

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has had varied opinions about Covid-19 and the pandemic. From doubting it to warning about it, Musk has had an extreme reaction to it. The Tesla CEO has now tweeted about Covid-19 in context with the Taliban. The Taliban have taken over Afghanistan and Musk posted a meme of a group of the leaders of the organisation. The meme doesn’t have any of the men wearing a mask. Musk tweeted, “Do they even know about the Delta variant!?” Musk’s tweet got viral and garnered over 3.9 lakh likes and close to 40,000 retweets. His meme and tweet — like always — generated a mixed bag of comments. Some users criticised and slammed him while others said that it’s a joke and shouldn’t be taken too seriously.

Musk has had ‘strange’ and varied opinions on Covid-19. In March 2020, when Covid-19 wasn’t a pandemic and was in its early stages across the world, Musk had called it “dumb.” He had tweeted that the “coronavirus panic is dumb”.
In November 2020, he said that he had tested positive and negative for Covid-10 after symptoms like typical cold and nothing unusual. He had tweeted back then, “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.” Musk has been seen in public spaces without a mask as well.
In April 2021, Musk came out in support of the vaccines and tweeted, “To be clear, I do support vaccines in general & covid vaccines specifically. The science is unequivocal. In very rare cases, there is an allergic reaction, but this is easily addressed with an EpiPen.”
In the last few days, the Taliban have rapidly taken over Afghanistan. Musk who does seem to be prolific on Twitter hadn’t said anything on that matter before posting a meme.