Evangeline Lilly wouldn't let Vanessa Hudgens be the only celebrity to get into hot water with their coronavirus takes this week.
The Ant-Man and Lost star came under fire after on Instagram wrongly claiming the COVID-19 coronavirus is just "a respiratory flu" and complaining it doesn't justify "the all-out, global lockdown, control, pandemonia and insanity we are experiencing," as reported by Page Six. The novel coronavirus, in fact, seems to be about 10 times more lethal than the seasonal flu.
Lilly also suggested she refuses to self-quarantine during the pandemic. The actress wrote "#businessasusual" on a photo of a cup of tea while saying that she "just dropped my kids off at gymnastics camp." When one user commented, "no Corona House Arrest???," she replied, "Not for this family." This is despite the fact that Lilly said that she is "living with my father at the moment, who has stage four lukemia" and "I am also immune compromised at the moment."
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
Join more than 350,000 subscribers and keep yourself informed with a selection of The Week’s most interesting, enlightening and entertaining stories - plus daily puzzles.
Join more than 350,000 subscribers and keep yourself informed with a selection of The Week’s most interesting, enlightening and entertaining stories - plus daily puzzles.
Latest Videos FromThe Week
But in another comment, Lilly said "some people value freedom over their lives. We all make our choices." And she even appeared to float a conspiracy theory surrounding the coronavirus by writing "there's 'something' every election year" in response to a user who claimed that "every few years some disease come out quick then disappears as quick as it came," apparently baselessly implying the pandemic is a hoax.
Lilly received a fair amount of pushback on Instagram even before generating heat on Twitter, with one user writing back to her, echoing the advice of health officials, "Oh that's disappointing. Social distancing is the only way to protect the most vulnerable. We are all in this together." This comes after Hudgens apologized this week for her own "insensitive" remarks about the COVID-19 coronavirus, with both stories leading The New York Times' Astead W. Herndon to joke, "coronavirus is like a blacklight for celebrity clownship."
