Hey celebrities, here’s how you can help us beat coronavirus
More than 65,000 Australians have already lost their jobs. The last thing we need right now is the rich and famous proselytising from their mansions. But there is something they can do, writes Lucy Carne.
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As scientists across the globe race against the clock to find a coronavirus vaccine, here’s hoping they also discover a cure for narcissism while they’re at it.
For if a crisis reveals our true character, we’ve certainly discovered just how grossly entitled the one per cent can be.
Not to take away from the kind gestures of everyday heroes: the out-of-work limousine driver ferrying elderly people to the shops or the growing movement to pay for a health worker’s groceries.
But as SARS-CoV-2 shuts down the globe, what has become painfully obvious is the inability of wealthy celebrities and blue bloods to look beyond their own surgically-enhanced noses.
And as the global spotlight is locked on one subject, attention seekers are struggling with their irrelevance.
If you can cast your mind all the way back to January (why does a week feel like a year now?), we were in shock over the news that Harry and Meghan Markle had turned their back on royal duties and wanted to live a quiet life of privacy in Canada.
Well, that lasted even less than Meghan did as a royal.
As the US closed their borders with Canada last week, Harry and Meghan jumped on a private jet (they seriously don’t get it) to evacuate to the safety of North America’s COVID-19 hotspot, Los Angeles.
Surely this is a time for social cohesion and family unity. But, no. Rather than rush back to England, where Harry’s 71-year-old father Prince Charles (the man who dutifully walked Meghan down the aisle and is next-in-line to the throne) is battling coronavirus, they’ve gone to Hollywood, of course.
Canada was only ever a decoy in an attempt to convince us of their fake commitment to the Commonwealth. This was always and only about Meghan’s career ambitions.
But it’s not just celebrities indulging in self-entitled pretension.
Take the wealthy Melbourne couple, who on their return from a luxury ski trip in Aspen, Colorado, tested positive to COVID-19. It was claimed that, rather than observe isolation, they played golf, went shopping, attended parties and sparked outrage among Portsea locals at risk of exposure to the killer virus.
Yet the couple insist they are victims of a hate campaign, with the woman claiming she had been cleared by the Health Department last Friday.
“I’ll tell you what, if we lived in Box Hill and I’d been to Bali no-one would care, would they?” she told News Corp.
Coronavirus is not just a lesson in the dangers of Asia’s wet markets, but also of self-assured hubris.
Arrogance and wealth has allowed people to elbow to the front of the testing queue, some without any symptoms or contact with a positive case (finger pointed firmly at Kris Jenner), while genuinely sick people struggling to breathe are turned away from hospitals in America.
And if witnessing economies collapse or Google Earth images of Iran’s mass graves aren’t disturbing enough, then there’s always Madonna in the bath.
Having clearly panic stockpiled cosmetic surgery, the pop icon sits naked in a milky bath sprinkled with rose petals in the video posted to social media. As tinkling harp music plays in the background, Madonna tells us that the novel coronavirus is “the great equaliser”.
“What’s terrible about it is what’s great about it,” the 61 year old says of the virus that has killed more than 27,300 people.
“What’s terrible about it is that it’s made us all equal in many ways – and what’s wonderful about it is that it’s made us all equal in many ways,” she says.
Tell that to the people in Centrelink queues, Madonna.
What’s terrible is that it is destroying the lives of innocent, hard working people. People who live paycheck to paycheck, paying rent to landlords who live paycheck to paycheck, working for companies that live paycheck to paycheck.
More than 65,000 Australians lost their jobs last week. Many more will follow.
What we don’t need right now is effluent from the affluent, who are safe in the comfort of their mansions.
This is about people trying to fathom how they will survive the next few months.
Hopefully what the pandemic will reveal is that we really don’t need celebrities and the wealthy gracing us minions with the glorious gift of themselves.
Please, spare us the superfluous lectures, selfish super spreaders or egotistical showboating.
Just give your money to hospitals and the scientists desperately finding a vaccine. That’s all you’re good for right now.
Lucy Carne is editor of Rendezview.com.au
Originally published as Hey celebrities, here’s how you can help us beat coronavirus