Kourtney Kardashian shared mask misinformation and got shut down hard

With great Instagram power comes great Instagram responsibility—a lesson (we hope) Kourtney Kardashian learned this week after posting some seriously misleading and potentially dangerous information about an already controversial (for some reason) topic. The reality star shared a slide on her Instagram stories that alleged to originate with the American Cancer Society (cancer.org), an organization that advises people to eat healthy, get their exercise, and stay away from tobacco. It’s safe to assume that they’d also recommend for people to not get COVID. In fact, a quick search of their website yields recommendations to wear masks and maintain safe social distancing, especially cancer patients. The post Kourtney shared, however, claimed that masks caused all kinds of ailments, including cancer.To be clear: they do not.Though the slide was taken down before it expired, it’s impossible to know how many of Kourtney’s 103 million followers saw it and took in its misinformation as fact, believing it was coming from a credible source (the American Cancer Society). To say that sharing it was irresponsible is putting it lightly. One British NHS doctor was far more harsh in his criticism of Kourtney.

 

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EDIT: It’s now, thank goodness, been taken down. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ I refuse to beat around the bush about this. @kourtneykardash how DARE you mislead people and suggest that wear a mask causes cancer. As doctors we have been wearing fucking masks for decades, can you even hear how ridiculous you sound?! MASKS SAVE LIVES. By posting dangerous misinformation to your millions of followers you are now going to be directly responsible for people’s deaths. No ifs, ands, or buts about it. Fucking fuming. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ To everyone else, please go and report her story by clicking on the three dots in the top right hand corner of it. This is not virtue signalling or some attempt at clout. This is serious.

A post shared by Dr Joshua Wolrich MBBS MRCS (@drjoshuawolrich) on Oct 31, 2020 at 2:50pm PDT

On his own social media accounts Dr. Joshua Wolrich let Kardashian know just how infuriating and reckless her post was, saying that the spread of this kind of misinformation in a social climate that is already resistant to mask-wearing could actually lead to people’s deaths. “As doctors we have been wearing f---ing masks for decades,” he pointed out, “can you even hear how ridiculous you sound?! MASKS SAVE LIVES.” Dr. Wolrich then asked his Instagram followers to report Kardashian’s post in an effort to get it taken down as quickly as possible.While Kourtney has advocated for mask-wearing on her social media accounts in the past, she’s also been photographed (selfie’d even) while taking vacations and attending parties sans face covering. It’s mixed messaging to say the least. If masks are, as some people have described them, an IQ test, Kourtney is scoring pretty low.[video_embed id='2070262']BEFORE YOU GO: This father had a priceless reaction to holding his first child [/video_embed]