Bethenny Frankel opens up about BStrong initiative amid coronavirus pandemic
Entrepreneur and TV star Bethenny Frankel on COVID-19 relief efforts; donate at Bethenny.com/BStrong
Bethenny Frankel told Fox News Monday she was tired of waiting to hear "doom and gloom" about the coronavirus pandemic and has focussed her efforts on solving problems with the help of her BStrong foundation.
"We don’t complain, we don’t blame, we just sort of get involved," the entrepreneur and sometime "Real Housewives of New York" star told "Bill Hemmer Reports," Monday.
Frankel has been manufacturing and donating hundreds of thousands of supplies, including surgical masks, to people at high risk for contracting the virus — including health care workers.
"We don’t complain, we don’t blame, we just sort of get involved."
Frankel told host Bill Hemmer that BStrong has already distributed over $17.5 million worth of protective equipment and other aid to health care workers, police officers and firefighters nationwide.
After more than a dozen tornadoes struck the South on Easter Sunday, damaging homes from Texas to Mississippi, Frankel said her foundation has been "pivoting" to send extra aid to the affected areas.
"We are working on 200 plus hospitals and over 15 states," she said. "At the beginning of the coronavirus, we had sent an 18-wheeler to Tennessee because they had already experienced tornadoes, so now, in just hearing this recent news... we are now going to pivot."
"For me, we’re going to pivot part of this operation to give some of our corona[virus] kits, our preventative kits, hand sanitizer, immune builders, vitamin C, with some protective equipment, gloves, wipes ... we're going to send some of those along with traditional aid, [whether for a] hurricane, earthquake, or a tornado to those areas in the South," she added, specifically mentioning Tennessee, Mississippi, and Georgia.
Frankel said her foundation has already distributed more than a million hazmat suits and 200,000 masks in New York, the epicenter of the outbreak in the U.S., and more than 50,000 hazmat suits to Louisiana, which has also become a hotspot of the virus in recent days.
"We are just distributing every day, allocating, vetting, inspecting, distributing, now this adds a new element to it, because certain areas were hit twice, now, and have nothing. They have less than nothing," she said. "So we're just going to keep moving, keep helping, keep working with local governments, and do our part."
WHAT HAPPENS AFTER YOU GET OVER THE CORONAVIRUS?
When asked how she managers to stay positive during these difficult times, Frankel said it is important to recognize that "anxiety is normal," but encouraged the public to "come together" and be "a part of the solution."
"People should be feeling scared, people are broke, people are being abused, people have no money, people have no jobs," she said. "People have to just come