Apple co-founder suggests he and his wife were 'patient zero' in U.S. for coronavirus
Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak set Twitter off on Monday with a very weird tweet alluding to the coronavirus outbreak.
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“Checking out Janet’s bad cough,” stated Wozniak. “Started Jan. 4. We had just returned from China and may have both been patient zero in U.S.”
In his tweet, the Apple co-founder appeared to be saying that he and his wife had possibly contracted the coronavirus after visiting China. Wozniak also wondered if the two of them could have been patient zero in the U.S.
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The tweet included a Swarm app check-in at the West Coast Sports Institute in Santa Clara, CA.
According to USA Today, Wozniak’s wife Janet later confirmed that she does not have the coronavirus. She has a sinus infection.
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Mashable reached out to Wozniak for more information and will update this post if we hear back.
Wozniak’s claims came the same day officials confirmed that six people had died from the virus in Washington State. Twitter users were very confused.
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The Apple co-founder joked about the coronavirus earlier this year on Twitter.
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The appropriateness of that January tweet aside, it was clearly a joke. But Monday's tweet, posted while the world prepares for an all-out pandemic, didn't include any obvious sign that Woz was joking.
Social media companies like Facebook have been working to purge coronavirus misinformation. Amazon has banned fake products claiming to “cure” the coronavirus. The World Health Organization even tried to use TikTok to debunk fake news about the virus.
With tens of thousands of people infected with the coronavirus around the world, the last thing people need is a famous person creating even more anxiety on Twitter.
UPDATE: March 4, 2020, 11:52 a.m. ET: In an email to Mashable, Wozniak wrote:
"My joking on January 23, or whatever, was a true joke. It was slightly before I heard the joke anywhere else. I like to think up my own jokes. But the truth is we had the right symptoms from the right part of the world to be coronavirus, from when we flew home from Hong Kong on January 4, before any major news or pandemic talk or testing or quarantines (even Wuhan) or travel restrictions. That joke was made when the talk started to increase about the seriousness of this coronavirus.
My recent tweet was true. It was a checkin at our doctor for some bad coughing that Janet has but was not what we had 2 months before, with all the COVID-19 symptoms. We have no way to know if we had COVID-19. We were too early and they had no tests and now we can’t get a test."
