Cardi B shared more thoughts on the spread of coronavirus in a four-minute Instagram video last night.
Donning a surgical mask, Cardi addressed the confusion over the best course of action for somebody displaying COVID-19 symptoms. Officials have encouraged people to wait for symptoms to develop before getting tested, as test kits are scarce—yet celebrities have tested positive for COVID-19 despite displaying no symptoms prior to testing, which Cardi said causes confusion among the public.
“If No. 45 is getting on a podium saying, ‘Hey, listen, if you do not have any symptoms of the coronavirus—which is coughing, fever, whatsoever, et cetera, et cetera—do not get tested because we do not have enough test kits to test everybody,” she said. “But if a celebrity is saying, ‘Hey, listen, I don’t have no symptoms, I’m feeling good, I feel healthy, I don’t feel like nothing, but I went and got tested and I’m positive for the coronavirus—that causes confusion. That makes people be like, ‘Well, wait a minute now. I don’t have no symptoms, but I know I went out this and that day. Shit, I might just have it. Shit, I’m scared because I’m around my kid, I’m around my grandparent. What should I do?’”
Cardi also noted that for working-class and impoverished people, obtaining a coronavirus test and getting results back is not nearly as quick or easy as it seems for celebrities. Moreover, she said, doctors’ advice for infected people to stay home and self-isolate is often easier said than done.
“What do they think they’re sending people home to? Not everybody has the luxury to go in their fucking bedroom and to go in a big-ass house and just stay away from people. A lot of people live in small-ass apartments with multiple people. So if you’re sending me home, and I have the corona-fucking-virus, I’m most likely gonna give it to my spouse, my kids, anybody that’s around me.”
The rapper seemed to respond in part to Idris Elba, who previously slammed her suggestion that celebrities might be getting paid to say they have coronavirus. Elba—who tested positive for COVID-19 a little over a week ago—called Cardi’s suggestion “absolute bullshit” and said the “negativity around test-shaming is counterproductive.”
Cardi ended her latest video with some harsh words for the United States government, criticizing what she considered a lack of proactivity in preventing the spread of coronavirus. “That shit could’ve been prevented when they found out about this shit a couple of months ago, and the shit that was going on in China,” she said. “We shouldn’t be charging no motherfucking Medicaid, health insurance, none of that shit. This is y’all’s fault that got into this motherfucking country.”
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