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Elon Musk on Tuesday revealed that he took multiple COVID-19 vaccines so that he could travel during the period of intense pandemic restrictions and that after taking his third shot, he nearly ended up hospitalized.
‘Messed Up’
Mr. Musk’s meme on waning vaccine efficacy drew a number of comments, including one by political journalist Ed Krassenstein, who raised objections.
Mr. Musk replied by saying that he’s not against vaccines in principle, but that he opposes mandates forcing people to get the shot.
He added that, until the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated President Joe Biden’s executive order imposing a vaccine-or-test mandate for large companies, his company SpaceX “and many other other companies would have been forced to fire anyone who refused to get vaccinated!”
“We would not have done so. I would rather go to prison than fire good people who didn’t want to be jabbed,” Mr. Musk continued.
Mr. Musk also revealed that he got COVID-19 and experienced “mild cold symptoms” but took vaccines repeatedly for travel.
“The third shot almost sent me to hospital,” Mr. Musk said.
“How many other people out there have symptoms that are actually from the vaccine or Covid treatment, rather than Covid itself?” he asked.
There’s a growing body of data suggesting that COVID-19 vaccine side effects are more serious than previously claimed.
Mr. Musk qualified his remarks by saying he’s not against vaccines as a matter of principle.
“It’s not like I don’t believe in vaccines—I do. However, the cure cannot be potentially worse than the disease,” he said.
“Public debate over efficacy should not be shut down,” Mr. Musk continued.
Mr. Musk added that he believes “there is also great potential for curing many diseases using synthetic mRNA, so let’s not throw the baby out with the bath water.”
“Just be sure to triple mask, Elon,” the account added.
Meanwhile, in Brussels, EU officials took Mr. Musk and X into their censorship crosshairs.
‘We Will Be Watching’
A senior European Union official on Sept. 26 accused X of being the top purveyor of disinformation and issued a veiled threat, prompting Mr. Musk to push back by posting the meme highlighting waning vaccine effectiveness and sparking online debate.
Unlike competitors like Facebook and Google, Mr. Musk’s X has refused to participate in the European Union’s (EU) voluntary anti-disinformation effort called the 2022 Code of Practice on Disinformation.
“Mr. Musk knows that he is not off the hook by leaving the code of practice because now we have the Digital Services Act fully enforced,” Ms. Jourova said. “So my message for Twitter is you have to comply with the hard law and we will be watching what you are doing.”
While X quite the voluntary code in May, it counts as a “very large online platform” under the mandatory Digital Services Act (DSA) and so is subject to stricter content rules.
Ms. Jourova reminded Mr. Musk of the fact that the EU has enforcement tools to pressure the platform into compliance with its content laws.
The 19 platforms that fall under the umbrella of the new rules are: Alibaba AliExpress, Amazon Store, Apple AppStore, Bing, Booking.com, Facebook, Instagram, Google Maps, Google Play, Google Search, Google Shopping, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Snapchat, TikTok, X, Wikipedia, YouTube, and Zalando.