Vibe check!
Paul Rudd seems to never age, and now the governor of New York is using that to his advantage.
“Actor and certified young person,” Rudd, who is a young 51, appeared in a public service announcement encouraging young people to wear their masks amid the coronavirus pandemic.
The PSA, titled “Certified Young Person Paul Rudd Wants You To Wear A Mask” hilariously uses slag — some current, some hopelessly uncool — to try to convince everyone to stay safe.
“Few days ago I was talking on the iPhone with my homie Governor Cuomo about how us millennials need to wear a mask,” Rudd says in the video. “He’s like, ‘Paul, you gotta help, what are you like, 26?’ And I didn’t correct him.”
He goes on to say he gets that “Yas queens like ourselves, we want to go to bars, we want to drink, hook up and do our Tik Toks, I get it,” but that “masks protect you and your dank squad.”
“Now that’s thicc,” he adds, nonsensically. The “Ant Man” actor is actually 12 years older than the oldest Millennials (ages 24-39) and nearly 30 years older than the oldest of Generation Z (23 and younger).
Young people have borne the brunt of the majority of new COVID-19 cases over the summer and as more students return to college campuses.
In June, Dr. Anthony Fauci warned young people have a “pent up urge" to go out into public spaces, but stressed the need to continue physical distancing and wear face coverings to prevent the spread of the virus.
Dr. Sadiya Khan, an epidemiologist at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine told NBC News that hundreds of new cases in recent weeks have been students who contracted the virus after returning to classes (and parties) on college campus.
Currently, some 20 percent of the cases in intensive care units are people between the ages of 18 and 34 whose chances of survival are better than those for the elderly or already ill people, Khan said.
As of Monday, the United States was approaching its 200,000th coronavirus fatality, though the death rate had slowed in the past two weeks.
Rudd's PSA is part of a larger campaign, "Mask Up America."
“This nation is still battling the COVID-19 pandemic and young people are not immune from it,” Cuomo said in a statement to TODAY on Monday night. “We all need to do our part and wear a mask.He also really committed to the bit by thanking Rudd for helping spread the message to "reach young people like him."
For his part, Rudd did attempt a Tik Tok dance and even went as far as to rap to appeal to the youths.
“Just wear a mask; it’s easy it’s simple. It’s not hard, people are dying!” he rapped/shouted. “Hundreds of thousands of people are dying and it’s preventable. It’s preventable! I shouldn’t have to make it fun! It’s science!”
