Kyle Richards Tests Positive for Covid Along With Like Half of the Beverly Hills Cast

The coronavirus pandemic has disproportionately impacted working-class people, particularly working-class people of color, which makes sense considering how our government has absolutely failed to provide for us this past year, sending us each a single $1,200 relief check to somehow cover nine months of disaster and calling it a day. People who have to work to survive have to work to survive, and that doesn’t stop being true just because the nature of a person’s workplace might put them at greater risk for transmission.

This is all to say that rich people in the United States really have to go out of their way to get covid, what with being able to hole up in their homes and Howard Hughes the fuck out while paying other people to do everything even slightly risky for them and all. Still, there are ways in which the über-rich might put themselves at risk. Unnecessarily politicizing the pandemic and continuing to attend in-person political events seems to be one major site for transmission among the wealthy. Filming a reality show seems to be another one, as Kyle Richards has now tested positive following a minor covid outbreak among the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills cast and crew.

“Since I was diagnosed, I have been separated from my family in order to keep them healthy,” she wrote in an Instagram post, per Page Six. “Unfortunately, [my daughter] Sophia also got it. We will stay in isolation until it’s safe to see the family and others again. I can’t wait to hug them.”

Richards is one of three Beverly Hills cast members who has tested positive for covid after the on-set scare, which forced production on the Bravo show’s 11th season to be “temporarily suspended” while “proper protocol” could be followed. The other two stars who are currently recovering from covid are Dorit Kemsley and Richards’ sister slash Paris Hilton’s mom, Kathy Hilton.

Moralizing about something as serious as the covid-19 pandemic, or really any public health issue, would be deep, deep asshole behavior on my part, so obviously I hope everyone involved makes a full recovery (just want to make that clear!). That said, maybe when three extremely wealthy women who were probably never at any real risk for transmission suddenly get covid because they’ve been filming a reality show, we might rethink the need to film reality shows right now! Just a thought. One woman’s take.

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