Dr. Anthony Fauci participated in a Zoom call with celebrities, taking their questions on COVID-19.
A private call with about 36 celebrities was organized by Kim Kardashian West, as CNN reports. Fauci told the outlet that the celebrities asked him questions like if it was safe to eat take-out food and about masks and social distancing.
Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said:
“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. I was impressed by the questions they asked, by their level of sophistication.”
Those in attendance were actors Orlando Bloom, Ashton Kutcher, Mila Kunis, singer-songwriter Katy Perry, among others. The call was roughly an hour long.
“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,” Fauci told CNN.
The nation’s top infectious disease expert also told the outlet of his question from Kunis who asked about take-out food. Fauci said he told her that he “[feels] badly about restaurants losing business, and I feel it’s almost a neighborly obligation to keep neighborhood restaurants afloat, so even though I can cook at home, several nights a week I go out for take-out purely to support those places.”
Asked then about if he would eat of the container the food came in or if he would transfer it to a plate, Fauci said he told Kunis he will do both but told her that “the one thing she can do instead of worrying is wash her hands.”
The Zoom call occurred in late April, and, as CNN notes, at that time Fauci — a member of the White House coronavirus task force — was doing fewer media interviews.