Getty Kim Kardashian organized a Zoom call with Dr. Anthony Fauci and other stars.
Early on in the COVID-19 pandemic, Kim Kardashian and a handful of other celebrities connected with Dr. Anthony Fauci via Zoom, Fauci told CNN on November 8. The A-listers spent about an hour in late April asking Fauci any questions they had, and many were similar to questions everyday Americans had, Fauci told CNN. Dr. Fauci is the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a member of the White House COVID-19 task force.
“It was a whole bunch of movie stars and some sports figures and they wanted to know about what they could do to stay safe, about wearing masks and avoiding crowds,” Fauci said. “I was impressed by the questions they asked, by their level of sophistication.”
The star-studded Zoom call included Kim Kardashian, Ashton Kutcher, Mila Kunis, Orlando Bloom, Katy Perry, Gwyneth Paltrow, 2 Chainz, and Brad Falchuk, according to Fauci and two others on the call.
Fauci added that these stars have “megaphones” and “could get the word out about staying safe.” Fauci continued, telling CNN, “Each of them has enormous numbers of followers on their social media accounts. I could say to them, for example, it’s important to wear a mask, and they get on their accounts and say ‘wear a mask’ and it goes out to an additional couple of million people.” A few days after the call, Perry and Bloom sported “Fauci Gang” sweatshirts to show their support.
Kim Kardashian Organized the Call
The Zoom meeting included about 36 celebrities, musicians, and athletes, Dr. Fauci told CNN. By now, Fauci has definitely become a household name, but he wasn’t the one who gathered all the stars together. Kim Kardashian got the idea, gathered a list of celebrities, and contacted Fauci’s office for a meeting, a source told CNN.
Kardashian became motivated to do so after Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams appeared on Good Morning America in mid-March pleading to stars like Kylie Jenner to share health guidelines with her followers. “We need to get Kylie Jenner and social media influencers out there, in helping folks understand that look, this is serious, this is absolutely serious,” Adams said on the show. “People are dying.”
Just a few hours after the show, Jenner posted an Instagram story asking her followers to do just what Adams had asked. She reminded everyone to, “stay inside” and “practice social-distancing, self-quarantine,” especially because many infected people are not yet showing symptoms, according to Good Morning America. “It’s serious, and the only way that we’re gonna slow this down is if we do this,” she said. “Nobody’s immune to this. Millennials are not immune to this.”
Jenner’s involvement inspired Kim Kardashian to also spread the word about the pandemic, sources told CNN. “She wanted to speak with someone, to ask questions, so she could spread accurate information because there were so many inaccuracies those first few months,” a source told CNN.
Two Kardashians Had COVID-19
Kylie Jenner may have motivated her older sister to organize the call with Dr. Fauci, but Kardashian may have had other reasons for doing so as well. Both Kim Kardashian’s husband Kanye West and sister Khloe Kardashian tested positive for COVID-19 in March.
Kim Kardashian and Kanye West have both opened up about West’s diagnosis. Around the same time that Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson announced they had the virus in mid-March, Kardashian told GRAZIA that her 43-year-old rapper husband also contracted COVID-19.
“Kanye had it way at the beginning, when nobody really knew what was going on,” she said. “It was so scary and unknown. I had my four babies and no-one else in the house to help.” Kardashian and West have four children together: North, 7, Saint, 4, Chicago, 2 and Psalm, 1.
On the Joe Rogan Experience, West detailed more of his experience. “I was shivering and having the shakes and taking hot showers and eating soup and just sleeping.” Rogan interrupted asking, “How bad did you have it?” West responded, “I don’t think it was that bad, I think it was a mild case. It threw everyone off, it threw everybody’s plans off.
More recently, Khloe Kardashian revealed she tested positive in late October on an episode of Keeping Up With the Kardashians. The 36-year-old Good American founder revealed that she suffered from vomiting, shaking, and hot and cold flashes. She also added that she already struggles with migraines, but she had horrible headaches as well. “I suffer from migraines, but this was the craziest headache,” she confessed. “I wouldn’t say it was a migraine. The coughing, my chest would burn when I would cough.”
Kardashian then relayed a slight warning to viewers saying, “Let me tell you, that s*** is real. But, we’re all gonna get through this. I pray that we follow orders and listen were all gonna be okay. May god bless us all.”
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