It’s sometimes better to keep your mouth shut and let people wonder if you’re a fool, than to open it and remove all doubt. But nobody told Bollywood celebrities.
Bollywood actor Siddharth today put his brain cells to work, and came up with a revolutionary new idea that would help India tackle the coronavirus pandemic and save millions of lives. “Should corporates in India be allowed to mass vaccinate their employees,” he wondered. Then he added some context, presumably based on some research he’d done. “Currently, corporate vaccination drives are being disallowed by the Government,” he claimed. He went on to elaborate his clever plan. “Make big corporates responsible and use their abilities to achieve faster vaccination,” he declared.
It seemed like a good scheme, and Siddharth seemed to have stepped in with his novel idea when all of India’s bureaucratic and corporate machinery had failed. But there was a problem — there was absolutely no basis to his claim that the government wasn’t allowing corporates to hold vaccination drives, and dozens of companies had already held vaccination drives for their employees.
More than a week ago, Zomato had started its vaccination drive for its delivery partners, and will be vaccinating 1.5 lakh of its partners.
Swiggy too has started its own vaccination drive to vaccinate employees.
Dunzo too has been vaccinating its employees.
And it’s not just delivery companies — Ola said that it had already vaccinated 50% of its employees through a vaccination drive.
Software major TCS was setting up 100 Covid vaccination centers to vaccinate its 5 lakh employees.
Wipro too ran vaccination camps for employees and their spouses.
Now Bollywood actors might be busy dancing and filching material from Hollywood to keep up with current affairs, but plenty has been happening on the Covid front right here in India. Siddharth was not only blissfully unaware that large-scale vaccinations by corporations were already taking place, but somehow also managed to invent the fake news that the government wasn’t allowing such drives to take place. But unlike Kangana Ranaut, who didn’t have the right political views, Siddharth is left liberal, and Twitter will likely look the other way and let him continue to spread this misinformation to his 4.5 million followers.