Coronavirus 'Patient Zero' in USA: Apple Co-founder Steve Wozniak Slammed for 'Joke'

Steve Wozniak, the Apple co-founder, claimed on Tuesday that he and his wife may have been “patient zero” for the coronavirus outbreak in USA, after they returned from their China trip in January. “Checking out Janet’s bad cough. Started Jan 4. We had just returned from China and may have both been patient zero in US,” he tweeted and tagged the West Coast Sports Institute in Santa Clara.

However, it was later found out that Janet did not have coronavirus, but a sinus infection. Responding to the update in an interview with USA Today, Steve said it was the “worst flu” of their lives, and he had to skip meetings in Las Vegas as he had lost his voice. He further added that his wife was coughing up blood and a hospital told them it was not an American flu.

In a conversation with CNET, Steve also revealed that when he notified the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), they sent him a standard response about washing hands. However, after raising alarm, he later clarified that the “patient zero” tweet was a joke. “Patient zero was kind of a joke. I think that our GI [gastrointestinal] symptoms would fit some other flu, because you rarely hear of that with COVID-19. But there's no way to ruse us out,” he was quoted as saying.

Twitter did not take too kindly to the 'joke' and stormed his feed with comments. One user wrote, "I wonder how many lives you ended by waiting a whole month." Another person simply posted, "Wow. Her cough started January 4th... so, 62 days of walking around in public, going to work. Yep, we are screwed." A third user even posted, “This might be the worst tweet in the history of this site.”