Pooja Bedi has been facing criticism for her posts about the lockdown, and from her stay at Goa. In her most recent post, she can be seen riding on a motorboat with her fiance Maneck Contractor. Along with the video, she wrote, "Joys of living in healthy, happy #goa. Free your mind #NoFear. Life is meant to be lived... not spent caged and masked for a year/years in fear of a virus that's clearly not going away! If you died tomorrow after year of masking/lockdown... what would your greatest regret be?"
This didn't go down too well with netizens since people immediately accused her of spreading misinformation about the pandemic, and especially masking. She replied to some justifying her stance.
While some Twitter users called her out for her 'flaunting her privilege', one called her a 'birdbrain'. When someone pointed out, "Ma'am people are dying of covid complications every day.check your privilege. God bless you," Pooja said that 'only state of mind' affects how you avail privilege.
"What privilege. ?? Beaches are available and accessible to every individual irrespective of what u consider privilege... We have a large coastline in India. It's only your state of mind (fearful or positive) that makes u avail the "privilege"," she replied.
Here are some of the other reactions/interactions:
Later, an user said that Pooja shouldn't use her privilege to get a hospital bed if she tests positive for the virus, to which she replied, "If I got covid.. I would do steam inhalation.. gargle with salt water... rest... eat herbs and drink lots of kaada. Think positive thoughts and be happy that while I didn't have covid I LIVED. And if I die of covid, well I'm happy I LIVED FREELY and was not stuck in a cage for a year."
One user sarcastically commented, "This is what everyone should do. Go out. Beat the fear. Live life. Wonder why doctors are asking us to stay put. But what do they know!" Mistaking that for support, Pooja replied that doctors 'only know what they've been conventionally taught', and cited Taiwan's example of no lockdown.
On 14 April, she'd tweeted an article commending Taiwan's coronavirus response, using it as an argument for her stance of 'living without the fear'. "It's incredible how living WITHOUT the fear of #coronavirus #COVID19 seems to be the way forward. Taiwan seems to have done remarkably well... with herd immunity? Only 10 covid deaths in a densely populated country," she tweeted.
Like with her latest tweet, users accused her of spreading misinformation. One user tweeted an article from Reuters which listed out the precautions Taiwan took to tackle the pandemic, including fines for not wearing masks in crowded places.
A study published in The Lancet in January 2021 found that “communities with high reported mask-wearing and physical distancing had the highest predicted probability of transmission control”.
"If I am infected and sitting across a table from a healthy person while wearing an N95 mask, 95 percent of my aerosol stays inside the mask. Even though 5 percent escapes, its velocity is less and it falls down as it escapes the mask. It will not reach the person sitting at a distance of 1 metre. If the person in front of me is also wearing a mask then it is safer because the viral particle will stop on the surface of his mask. Surgical masks and cloth masks offer similar protection but the degree is reduced," said Dr Arvind Kumar, Founder Trustee of Lung Care Foundation, as reported by The Quint.
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