The Internet Owes Vanessa Hudgens an Apology

In March 2020, Vanessa Hudgens became the designated punching bag for saying the quiet part out loud during an Instagram Live session that, in hindsight, hardly warranted the backlash it received.

The High School Musical star Hudgens was casually streaming when she said, “Um... yeah, till July, sounds like a bunch of b*llshit. I'm sorry. But like, it's a virus, I get it. Like, I respect it. But at the same time, like, even if everybody gets it... Like, yeah, people are gonna die. It's just terrible, but like... inevitable?” She immediately realized she might’ve messed up, following up with, “I don’t know. Maybe I shouldn’t be doing this right now.”

Unfortunately for her, it was already too late. People on X started tweeting “f*ck her” and weirdly making fun of her appearance for no reason. The backlash was relentless like she had just declared herself a full-time pandemic denier. She had to apologize publicly for her insensitive comments shortly after. Looking back now, maybe Hudgens deserves an apology for the backlash she received.

Meanwhile, government officials who spent years enforcing brutal lockdowns and mandates were out here treating Covid restrictions like a game of “rules for thee, but not for me.” A September 2024 article from The Atlantic admitted that while millions of people were locked in their homes, some of the very health officials crafting those restrictions were sneaking off to sex parties.

Dr. Jay Varma, New York City’s former senior public health adviser, attended two underground sex parties in 2020 while also helping design policies that kept people from visiting their dying relatives. He later justified it by saying he needed to “blow off steam.” And when called out, the biggest issue some media outlets had wasn’t his hypocrisy; it was that he wasn’t transparent about it.

Imagine losing a parent alone in a hospital, unable to say goodbye, only to find out the people enforcing these restrictions were partying in secret. Or that, while family-owned businesses were shut down, Dr. Fauci made millions of dollars? Where’s the mob for that?

Hudgens was vehemently sorry at the time, saying, “I realize my words were insensitive and not at all appropriate for the situation our country and the world are in right now.” Last time I checked, Hudgens wasn’t secretly partying while telling everyone else to stay home. She was just saying something out loud that, at the time, people weren’t ready to hear.

So, if the internet has any integrity (which, let’s be real, it doesn’t), it should consider redirecting some of that misplaced outrage. And maybe, just maybe, Vanessa Hudgens deserves a retroactive apology.

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