Last night on HBO Real timehost Bill Maher closed his show with a “New Rule” segment that called for a “COVID Commission” to investigate the country’s missteps in the face of the pandemic.
“I understand that we didn’t know exactly what was happening at the start of COVID and that some mistakes were inevitable,” Maher told his audience. “But four years later, I’m tired of hearing, ‘Well, we didn’t know.’ No, we didn’t. But some guessed better than others. And those who were wrong don’t seem to want to admit it anymore.”
“Some people said that closing schools for so long was unnecessary and would cause much greater collateral damage to children and they were right,” he added.
Maher also criticized The Daily Beast for exposing him in 2021 for his support of the Wuhan lab leak theory. The headline read “Bill Maher pushes Steve Bannon to Wuhan lab conspiracy theory,” which he noted was “typical of the mainstream media of the time.”
“Of course, it wasn’t a conspiracy theory, and Steve Bannon didn’t own it. And now everyone, including the Biden administration, admits that there is at least a 50/50 chance that the virus could have appeared in the Wuhan lab that was doing gain-of-function research on this virus, duh! But I don’t see many retractions published,” Maher said.
The HBO host then ridiculed the initial claim that natural immunity was inferior to the COVID vaccine and pointed out several overreactions to the pandemic, such as washing mail and using glory holes for sex .
“For two years we had to have our nostrils kissed every time we left the house!” he exclaimed, before criticizing the idea of wearing masks at the beach.
“Because the last thing you want to do when an illness strikes is get some fresh air, sunshine and vitamin D,” Maher said sarcastically. “No, it’s better to stay cooped up, stressed and drinking all day.”
“Yes, some very bad ideas have been adopted as conventional wisdom, ideas that have not aged well. And a lot of his dissenting opinions that were suppressed and ridiculed at the time have been proven to be accurate,” the HBO host added. “Maybe that’s why the powers that be never wanted a COVID commission. Why not? We love commissions! The Warren Commission, the AIDS Commission, the 911 Commission. The NFL even had a question: “Is sticking your head into another guy’s head bad for your head?” Commission.”
“So where is the COVID commission? Because it seems to me that we have learned nothing. Maybe the first lesson of the pandemic was the need for good ventilation, the second was to never go on Zoom with Jeffrey Toobin,” he joked.
“But if there was a big national campaign to renovate buildings, I missed it. Gain-of-function research is still ongoing in laboratories. We continue to torture animals by raising our food in ideal conditions for viruses to spread to humans.
“We handed out $4 trillion in free money, $280 billion of which was outright stolen in what the AP called ‘the biggest scam in U.S. history’ and triggered an inflationary spiral that we now blame on Biden. So we’re going to bring back Trump?! The guy who ignored COVID like it was the dinner check?!
“Talk about learning nothing,” Maher concluded. You can watch the full segment above and see new episodes of In Real Time with Bill Maher Fridays at 10 p.m. ET on HBO and streaming on Max.
New York Post
