Taylor Swift Calls Out People Ignoring Coronavirus Safety Rules

Taylor Swift has criticized people who “don’t seem to have their eyes open” to the coronavirus pandemic.

The behavior of those ignoring COVID-19 safety guidelines because they don’t understand the threat of the virus or don’t care about its potentially fatal consequences is “upsetting,” the singer said in an interview with Entertainment Weekly out this week.

Swift, one of the magazine’s “Entertainers of the Year” and the star of its December cover, was asked what she thought of people flouting government advice by crowding maskless into bars in her home city of Nashville, Tennessee, during the public health crisis.

“I mean, you just immediately think of the health workers who are putting their lives on the line — and oftentimes losing their lives,” Swift said. “If they make it out of this, if they see the other side of it, there’s going to be a lot of trauma that comes with that; there’s going to be things that they witnessed that they will never be able to un-see.”

“I did a lot of research on my grandfather (Dean, who fought in World War II) in the beginning of quarantine, and it hit me very quickly that we’ve got a version of that trauma happening right now in our hospitals,” Swift added. “God, you hope people would respect it and would understand that going out for a night isn’t worth the ripple effect that it causes. But obviously we’re seeing that a lot of people don’t seem to have their eyes open to that — or if they do, a lot of people don’t care, which is upsetting.”

Swift recorded her eighth studio album, “folklore,” during the pandemic and released it in July. One of the new songs, “Epiphany,” appears to reference the pandemic in the second verse:

Something med school did not cover,

Someone’s daughter, someone’s mother,

Holds your hand through plastic now,

Doc, I think she’s crashing out,

And some things you just can’t speak about.

 Read the full interview here and listen to “Epiphany” below: