Facebook user Allison Goodbaum shared a video of a mask-less woman in a New York City bagel shop yelling expletives and purposefully coughing on fellow customers.- The woman, Goodbaum said, overheard her asking the store's employee to enforce mask-wearing in the establishment and lashed out.
- The video has since been reposted on Instagram and Twitter where it went viral, receiving over 4.5 million views and spurring commenters to identify the woman, who they claim is a former employee of Weill Cornell Medicine.
- Weill Cornell responded to the allegations, stating that the woman had not been an employee since January of 2020 and that the behavior exhibited in the video was "abhorrent."
As nationwide protests continue and the
Allison Goodbaum was getting a bagel at New York City Bagel Coffee House in Astoria, Queens when she says she noticed a coughing patron who was not wearing a mask. She pointed out the mask-less customer to an employee of the store and suggested that the establishment enforce New York's executive order stating that masks must be worn by people who cannot stay six feet apart amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
The unmasked woman, Goodbaum says, overheard the complaint and began yelling, insisting that she had COVID antibodies and that other customers could mind their own "f------ business." She proceeded to cough on Goodbaum and "call [her] names."
New York City Bagel Coffee House, Goodbaum claims, did not check on her wellbeing after the incident — and still served the coughing patron.
Goodbaum shared her recollection of the encounter on Facebook, complete with a video filmed by another customer, and encouraged people to share the post.
In the clip, the mask-less woman can be heard calling someone "a p-----" and walking away from the register where she was purchasing something to approach another woman and cough on her.
"Words truly cannot express my disappointment in humanity these days," Goodbaum wrote in the post. "I know there are bigger problems in the nation right now but more and more it seems the people who are just trying to standup for the right things are getting bulldozed by bullies."
Goodbaum posted the video, she wrote, to encourage people to "choose kindness in these situations" and to "look out for one another."
Goodbaum added that she will "NEVER" be going back to New York City Bagel Coffee House following the staff's handling of the incident.
She concluded the post by warning her Astoria neighbors to "stay far away" should they encounter in the woman in the video.
"Lookout for everyone in your community and please choose peace and kindness," she wrote.
While the video generated only several hundred reactions and comments on Facebook, it has been circulated widely on other platforms, and social media users scrambled to identify the mask-less customer.
The video went viral after being reshared on the karensgoingwilds Instagram account and on Twitter.
"This #Karen was caught coughing in other costumers after being called out for not wearing a mask," karensgoingwilds captioned the Instagram post, where the page's admin alleged that the woman in the video was a 27-year-old from Astoria.
"That look of shame," one commenter wrote. "Can't wait until her identity is exposed."
"You about to lose yo job!" another wrote, referencing a viral video in which a woman being detained by a police officer raps the phrase (which then became an Internet anthem).
The clip, re-shared in a tweet by @semperdiced, has been viewed 4.5 million times in just three days.
"Y'all need to act right," he captioned the video.
—DeMarcus (@semperdiced) June 13, 2020
Several commenters replied to the tweet of the so-called "coughing Karen," also identifying the woman as a former employee of Weill Cornell Medicine. Several tweets shared screenshots of her social media accounts. The identified person's Instagram and LinkedIn profile appear to have been removed.
Insider has not been able to independently verify the identity of the woman in the video and is accordingly not including the name circulating online.
Amid the online attention, a verified Instagram user with the same name even changed her Instagram bio to read: "Not the coughing karen (just the same name)."
Weill Cornell issued a statement on Twitter in response to a tweet identifying the person in the video as a former employee, saying that she had not been an employee since January of 2020.
"As an institution on the COVID-19 frontlines, this behavior is shocking & abhorrent to us," the tweet read. "Since WCM's mission is to protect the health & wellbeing of all NYers, we condemn this flagrant disregard of public safety."
Goodbaum told WPIX that she was discouraged to hear that the mask-less patron allegedly worked in the health care field.
"If you're working in the health care industry it's entirely up to you to know the guidelines and enforce them for yourself and have the knowledge and understanding, because that's your world, to take it seriously," she said. "People like that should not be working in the health care industry."
The suspected person in the video could not be reached for comment. New York City Bagel Coffee House and Weill Cornell did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.
See Goodbaum's full Facebook post about the incident below:
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