Health Experts Are Taking Over Celebs' Instagrams To Share COVID Info
Celebrities are “passing the mic” on their Instagram accounts to let us all hear science and facts about COVID from real experts
If you follow Julia Roberts on Instagram, you might notice things are a little different from usual on her account today. Instead of the Pretty Woman actress, her page will feature Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and member of the White House coronavirus task force, sharing news and information about COVID-19.
It’s all part of a new campaign called #PassTheMic, which, over the next three weeks, will see celebrities handing over their Instagram accounts to public health experts and front line workers, so we can hear from the people who really know what’s going on in the midst of the COVID-19 crisis.
A ton of A-list celebrities have agreed to participate in the campaign, including Roberts, Hugh Jackman, Millie Bobby Brown, Yemi Alade, Connie Britton, Danai Gurira, David Oyelowo, Sarah Jessica Parker, Penelope Cruz, Shailene Woodley, Busy Philipps, Rainn Wilson, and Robin Wright. Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson will also take part, after they made headlines early on in the coronavirus pandemic for being some of the first celebrities to contract and recover from COVID-19.
All these famous people will be giving up control over their own social media accounts so we can hear about the COVID pandemic from “people who actually know what they’re talking about,” according to a promotional video for the campaign.
In addition to Dr. Fauci, there are numerous other health experts, doctors, nurses, and other front line workers who will be doing the Instagram takeovers to share the latest news, science, and stories of their own, very real experiences from the front lines of the pandemic. Those will include David Anderson (Nurse, Director of Quality at Nightingale Hospital, Manchester), Aya Chebbi (Youth Envoy, African Union), Jen Kates (Global Health & HIV Policy), and others.
The campaign is designed by ONE World Campaign, an organization that’s fighting to end poverty, hunger, and preventable diseases around the world. The organization hopes to eradicate all preventable disease globally by 2030. The COVID-themed celebrity social takeovers begin today, and will last through the rest of May and into June as one expert takes over one celebrity’s social media accounts each day. You can watch the takeovers on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.
Celebrities, in some ways, really are like us normal folks — they aren’t experts on infectious disease and it would be dangerous if they pretended otherwise. So tune into their social accounts over the next few weeks to learn from the real experts to learn the latest info.
