“I don’t want politics mixed in with my medical decisions.”
That was the emphatic conclusion from Bill Maher, the outspoken progressive and host of ‘Real Time with Bill Maher’, during his monologue over the weekend which took direct aim at the media for hyping up the dangers of COVID in order to garner ratings.
The rant – which comes with a language warning – hits both sides of the aisle but mainly targets the mainstream media for their insistence on portraying COVID in the most negative light possible.
In one stunning statistic, Maher points out that a recent survey showed a a stunning 70% of democrats believed the chances of getting hospitalized after getting Covid were either between 20-49% or 50% and up.
The actual number is 1 to 5%.
Mike Rowe rarely weighs in on the views of other well-known commentators, but broke format to voice support for Maher’s sentiment, even though noting he doesn’t often agree with Maher.
“I hesitate to share this, because I don’t agree with a lot of what Bill Maher has to say,” Rowe began. ‘But, when a person you disagree with takes a position that’s unpopular with his or her base, that takes a certain amount of integrity. And integrity is in short supply these days. Say want you want about the guy, he’s right about the madness of mixing medicine and politics. So, I’m sharing this anyway. Enjoy, if you can…”
Maher attributed this shocking lack of factual information to the media, which constantly frames the pandemic in what he called a “panic porn” type of way.
He also blasted people for blindly criticizing Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who he said obviously did a much better job protecting the elderly than Governor Andrew Cuomo did.
“Those are just facts. I know it’s irresponsible of me to say them,” Maher quipped, mocking cancel culture.
Maher went on to point out that obesity has become a “third rail” topic in culture today, and because of that it’s nearly impossible to bring up the fact that 78% of people hospitalized for Covid were overweight or obese.
“It is the key piece of the puzzle, by far the most pertinent factor but you dare not speak its name,” Maher argued. “Imagine how many lives could’ve been saved if there had been some national campaign ala Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move program, with the urgency of the pandemic behind it,” he said.
“If the media and the doctors had made a point to keep saying, ‘but there’s something you can do’. But we’ll never know because they never did. Because the last thing you want to do is say something insensitive. We would literally rather die. Instead, we were told to lockdown. Unfortunately, the killer was already in the house, and her name was Little Debbie.”
You can watch the entire monologue by clicking below.
CONTENT/LANGUAGE WARNING: Segment features expletives, crass jokes
Bill Maher criticizes media for overhyping dangers of COVID.