As stars peddle fake news and make ill-judged music videos, we ponder what famous people on social media can do to comfort and cheer up people On 23 March, the day after the nationwide people’s curfew called by the prime minister, Amitabh Bachchan tweeted to his 40.5 million followers.
The tweet has since been deleted but the gist was the same erroneous information that had been doing the rounds on WhatsApp: that clapping and conch vibrations would “reduce/destroy virus potency".
At another time, it would be easier to dismiss this as the vague ramblings of a 77-year-old. But this is clearly a moment in our history when simple information, disseminated properly, could save countless lives.