Article Lead Image

Shutterstock Shutterstock (Licensed)

Idris Elba slams Cardi B’s coronavirus conspiracy theory

Cardi B insinuated that celebrities are being paid to say they have coronavirus.

 

Dominic-Madori Davis

Internet Culture

Posted on Mar 24, 2020   Updated on Mar 24, 2020, 5:20 pm CDT

Idris Elba has a few words for Cardi B after the rapper questioned if some celebrities were being paid to say they have the coronavirus.

In an Instagram Live, Cardi questioned how celebrities are getting tested for and saying they have the coronavirus when they don’t have any symptoms.

“Sounded like a motherf*cking flat tummy tea commercial,” she says.

She then went on to insinuate that some celebrities may be getting paid to say that they have COVID-19.

Idris Elba, who, along with his wife, tested positive for the virus. He slammed the conspiracy, though he didn’t mention Cardi specifically by name.

“I think the debate about rich and poor and who’s getting it and who’s not, I think, is not a healthy debate. It’s like, I got a test but I also got COVID. Does that make me preferential? I don’t understand that,” Elba says in a video. “I think that the negativity around test-shaming is counterproductive. I don’t see what people get out of that.”

He then went on to address Cardi’s theory by calling it “absolute bullshit” and “such stupidness.”

“And also this idea that someone like myself is gonna be paid to say I’ve got coronavirus?” he questions. “People wanna spread that as if it’s news. That’s stupid. It’s the quickest way to get people sick because there’s no benefit to me and Sabrina sitting here saying we’ve got it or we ain’t got it. I don’t even understand the logic of that.”

Elba then said he doesn’t feel like he is privileged to have received a test because he ended up actually contracting the virus. “I’m just a human being and I just happen to be in the public eye,” he says. “So I want people to understand that this is very real.”

Cardi B has yet to respond to Elba’s video. But this is hardly the first time she has spoken out regarding the coronavirus. The rapper has found her own fame with COVID-19 as a video of her saying the word “coronavirus” spread across the internet, creating memes and even a chart-topping song.

The U.S. is grabbling to contain the pandemic, as the nation reports 52,400 cases with over 600 deaths.

READ MORE:

Share this article
*First Published: Mar 24, 2020, 5:19 pm CDT