The Malaria That Nearly Killed Him

Elon Musk is famous for working almost all the time and for distrusting rest. One reason is a case of malaria that put him in intensive care.

A vacation that went wrong

Elon Musk had just been replaced as chief executive of the company that became PayPal. To decompress, he and his wife, Justine, took a vacation that included his first trip back to South Africa since he left at 17, ending at a game reserve. Somewhere on the trip he was bitten by a mosquito carrying falciparum malaria, the most dangerous form of the disease, which can attack the brain and kill quickly.

How close it got

Back in California in January 2001, he was first diagnosed with viral meningitis. An infectious-disease doctor at Sequoia Hospital in Redwood City then identified falciparum malaria. He spent 10 days in intensive care and took about 5 months to recover.

The lesson he took from it

Most people who nearly die on a trip come home wanting to slow down, but Elon Musk drew the opposite conclusion. His takeaway, delivered as a joke, was "that's my lesson for taking a vacation: vacations will kill you." It fit a work ethic that was already intense. During the same months he began to study rockets, the interest that became SpaceX in 2002.

The bottom line

The malaria scare helps explain why Elon Musk treats rest as risky and work as safe, a view rooted in the memory of nearly dying after a rare long vacation.