‘I’m over Covid’: Bill Maher says Americans shouldn’t obediently follow all doctors’ advice

That the medical establishment ‘never even attempted to get people to live a healthier lifestyle as a response to this pandemic is a giant scandal to me,’ HBO host says

Bill Maher has said that he’s “over Covid” and that doctors shouldn’t tell people “just do what we say” in relation to how to handle the pandemic.

The comedian and HBO talk show host told Deadline in an interview that “I feel like Covid is still the dominant issue of our lives right now and it should not be anymore”.

The 66-year-old said he was “never scared” of Covid-19, but that he was “always scared of the reaction to it”.

“As this has played out that only proved to be more true for me,” Mr Maher, who contracted the virus in May of last year, told Deadline. “I’m sure many people feel different, but that’s me. It was never that virulent a threat, I thought, to people who were in good health.”

“We should, of course, protect the vulnerable, but it was mostly a disease of the very old, which every disease is a threat to, and people who have comorbidities, which mostly is due to lifestyle,” he added.

The Real Time with Bill Maher host said that “78 per cent of the people who died or went to the hospital were obese”.

A CDC study from March last year showed stated that “among 148,494 adults who received a Covid-19 diagnosis during an emergency department or inpatient visit at 238 US hospitals during March–December 2020, 28.3 per cent had overweight and 50.8 per cent had obesity”.

“I’m not saying they deserved to die. Don’t twist my words, please,” Mr Maher said. “I’m just saying that is a lifestyle, you know? So, the fact that America, the medical establishment, never even attempted to get people to live a healthier lifestyle as a response to this pandemic is a giant scandal to me.”

The comedian said that if Americans had tried to increase “their vitamin D levels, up their zinc levels, stop eating sugar, get a proper amount of sleep, stop overeating and day drinking, which is what went on during this pandemic, they would have a much better chance. The people who didn’t do that have blood on their hands. There’s no other way to put it”.

He noted that the “medical establishment is rather cozy with the pharmaceutical industry, so I understand that their only idea about solving this is a pharmaceutical response”.

“But shouldn’t we also have at least mentioned this other way to deal with it?” he asked.

He went on to note that vaccines don’t prevent people from contracting the virus or infecting others.

The vaccines “just prevent you from dying, which is a great part of it, let’s not undercount that. But if they don’t prevent you from transmitting it and they don’t prevent you from getting it why are we still treating this disease the way we always have?” he said.

Despite studies showing that booster shots increase immunity in the face of the highly transmissible Omicron variant, Mr Maher said he would “never” get one because they’re “useless”.

“I didn’t want the first vaccine,” he said. “We should not treat people unfairly who want to allow their own immune system to take care of the situation. But okay, I took one for the team.”

He went on to say that the medical establishment “don’t know a lot about anything”.

“We still don’t understand too much about how the human body works,” Mr Maher said. “So, don’t sit there in your white coat and tell me ‘just do what we say’. When have we ever been wrong? A lot is my answer. A lot. They drilled mercury into my teeth when I was a child. Now, of course, we don’t do that anymore, but do you really think in 50 years people will look back and say, ‘oh, yeah, we had it all figured out in 2022?’ No, they will be appalled at things we’re doing right now”.

Mr Maher claimed that “medical error” is the third leading cause of death in the US and that what we will “know in the future will certainly make that number rise”.

According to a CDC report from last month, Covid-19 was the third leading cause of death in the US.

“Unintentional injuries, the 3rd leading cause in 2019, became the 4th leading cause in 2020,” the CDC said.