A star instructor for the trendy cycling training brand SoulCycle is stepping back after being criticized for getting the COVID-19 vaccine under the pretext as a teacher.
On Friday, Stacey Griffith – a top fitness trainer in New York City who, according to a recent Vox report, earned at least $ 800 per class – shared footage of her trip to Staten Island to get the Moderna vaccine.
‘Now I can teach @SoulCycle with a little more faith that we will all be fine if we [vaccine]”Griffith, with whom Kelly Ripa and Madonna had acquaintances, said 64,000 followers on Instagram.
It did not take long for many of these fans to become the 52-year-old author of Two turns of zero for the care of the elderly and high-risk individuals who have yet to be vaccinated.
‘Let’s celebrate that we’re making the world safe for a personal class during a global pandemic,’ reads a remark by a woman who says she and her wife, a cancer patient, were still months away from being eligible for their own shots. “What is left of respect for Soul and the leaders he celebrates is gone and gone.”
Griffith initially defended her choice and the Daily Beast that as a teacher she falls under the New York City Health Department’s 1B qualification, which includes health care workers, residents over the age of 65, grocery stores and teachers – the kind who oversee classrooms and day care, not for workouts.
“All teachers are eligible to apply for the vaccine,” Griffith said. Daily Beast on Friday. “My message today was to show my confidence in the system, in our government, and I hope everyone can at least feel more comfortable knowing that I went through the process!”
She added that she owes it to her community, “in my profession of health and wellness as a teacher”, to be vaccinated to help reduce the transfer within her classes.
“If I get vaccinated, it can stop the short spread within groups!” Griffith told the publication. ‘I function as a common point for many people who overlap. In my profession of health and wellness as a teacher, it is my priority to make my community and their respiratory systems work at full capacity so that they can defeat this virus if infected by it. I can only teach them if I am healthy myself. ”
She made the same point to a critic on Instagram who questioned her judgment.
“It’s my top priority to keep you all safe. It’s my top priority to keep my elderly riders safe,” she wrote. “I see hundreds every week, I think it’s fair to say it was a good decision.”
But the setback continued, with critics arguing that the best way to protect the elderly was not to jump in front of them in the vaccination line, plagued by long waiting lists, shortages, confusion over online forms and scheduling hiccups. Vox‘s Alex Abad-Santosmeanwhile thought that at the moment few elderly or high-risk riders are likely to be found in Griffith’s SoulCycle classes, as they are currently kept outside in the cold.
Griffith finally deleted her message and said Daily animal, “I hate controversy. It makes me sad that people are getting so dark and mean, I’m actually just trying to do the right thing and be safe. ”
Griffith – whose sincere romance with fashion designer Michelle Smith of Milly fame appeared on Monday in New York Times – shared a more remorseful message.
“I would like to deeply apologize for my recent actions in receiving the vaccine,” she wrote in an Instagram post, for which comments were eliminated. “I made a terrible mistake of judgment and I regret it.”
Her apology comes on the heels of a statement from SoulCycle in which he makes it clear that instructors should not be vaccinated on the basis of ‘educators’.
“Stacey Griffith was personally able to apply for a NY COVID-19 vaccine,” a SoulCycle spokeswoman told Yahoo Life. “SoulCycle does not play a role in organizing or obtaining vaccinations for instructors or other employees, nor do we encourage any of our SoulCycle employees to have vaccination priority as educators.”
Griffith has not yet responded to Yahoo Life’s request for comment.
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Originally published