San Francisco, Mar 8 (IANS): Mathematician Nassim Nicholas Taleb took to the Twitter to respond to Tesla CEO Elon Musks tweet about what he called a panic over the novel coronavirus (COVID-19).

Elon made a controversial tweet recently regarding the coronavirus scare. According to him, the panic over coronavirus is 'dumb'.

Responding to Musk, the mathematician tweeted, "Saying the coronavirus panic as dumb is what's dumb."

Taleb is the author of the Incerto, a five volume philosophical essay on uncertainty published between 2001 and 2018 of which the most known books are The Black Swan and Antifragile.

Meanwhile, there was a range of comments with people reacting to Musk's tweet.

A user wrote: "I'm totally amazed that somebody who owns a company where employees can't work from home would call taking steps to protect workplaces from a highly-infectious disease dumb."

Another said: "Elon should take his wife to Italy this weekend and go walking around the cities."

The post has been retweeted more than 3,12,000 times, and liked 1.5 million times.

A post read: "Billionaires should not exist. And this kind of senseless disregard for the wellbeing of vulnerable members of our society helps prove why."

Chinese health authorities said on Sunday that the number of new coronavirus cases in the mainland had dropped to less than 50, which marked a new low since the outbreak was first reported last December.

Deaths outside China were reported in Italy (233), Iran (145), South Korea (50), the US (19), France (16), Japan (13), Spain (eight), Australia (three) Iraq (two), the UK (two), Hong Kong (two), Switzerland (one), the Netherlands (one), Thailand (one), Taiwan (one) and Philippines (one).