Country singer Chase Rice has been blasted for joking about having the coronavirus on social media. The singer-songwriter had fans worried after tweeting about experiencing the symptoms of COVID-19 but aroused suspicion when he used the attention-grabbing post to then promote his latest single.
"Just lost my taste and smell. Weird. Also, dropping a single at midnight," Rice wrote to Twitter on Monday. Then, in a follow-up tweet, he assured fans that he was not in fact sick.
"On a real note. Don't have covid," he wrote. "But I'm dropping a single tonight. With 2 guys that I learned a lot from. Respect the hell out of @FLAGALine. And 10 years after we started doing music together and lived together, we're at it again. Drinkin beer. Talkin God. Amen."
Followers on Twitter were up in arms.
"I'm legitimately glad you're ok but it's NOT funny joking about having Covid. Especially to promote music. People are literally dying from it. And Tyler might not find your joke funny either since he's actually HAD Covid," one Twitter user wrote.
"Always a good idea to mock the over 230,000 dead Americans and over 1,000,000 that have tested positive from COVID-19 in a feasible attempt to promote your new music," another added.
Some fans called for Rice to donate personal protective equipment to local hospitals, while others reminded the musician that healthcare workers fighting on the front lines of the pandemic would not appreciate his humor.
This is the second time this year that Rice is catching heat on social media. In June he faced backlash after sharing footage of his concert at which a packed crowd was not wearing masks or practicing social distancing. In response to the outrage, Rice said: "You guys are everything to me so your safety is a huge, huge priority," according to Yahoo! News.
The musician has not responded to the latest wave of backlash.
Zoe Papadakis ✉
Zoe Papadakis is a Newsmax writer based in South Africa with two decades of experience specializing in media and entertainment. She has been in the news industry as a reporter, writer and editor for newspapers, magazine and websites.
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