LOS ANGELES: Reality TV star Kim Kardashian faced a backlash Tuesday after chartering a private jet to fly her entourage to a remote tropical island for lavish 40th birthday celebrations during the coronavirus pandemic.
Kardashian and her “closest inner circle” spent last week dancing, kayaking and swimming with whales on a private isle where they could “pretend things were normal just for a brief moment in time,” she tweeted.
The trip took the celebrities, including US-Palestinian musician Fai Khadra, sisters Khloe and Kourtney and half-sister Kendall Jenner, some 6,400 kilometers from Los Angeles to Tahiti, according to E! and TMZ.
But the glamorous festivities were immediately condemned as “disgustingly tone deaf” by social media users at a time when coronavirus has killed more than 226,000 Americans.
“Are you that insensitive you don’t realize this is not what the majority of people during the worst covid spike yet want to hear? People are going to food banks not private islands,” posted British musician Peter Frampton.
“Cool, people have had to say goodbye to loved ones over the phone while they died alone in a hospital, but neat trip to post all over social media while the world suffers. So humble and so down to earth, truly,” tweeted another user, in a post swiftly drawing 11,000 “likes.”
Kardashian said her guests had been asked to quarantine for two weeks before departure, and had undergone multiple “health screens.”
