Tucker Carlson tells viewers to ‘ignore’ TV medical advice after two Fox News hosts recommend Covid vaccine

‘You shouldn’t comply mindlessly – you are an American adult,’ Fox News host says on his show

Fox News personality Tucker Carlson questioned the legitimacy of Covid-19 vaccine advice, directly contradicting his co-stars on the same network who that day had urged viewers to get the jab.

In his Monday segment, titled “Our leaders want us to shut up and not ask questions”, Mr Carlson told viewers: “There are a lot of people giving you medical advice on television and you should ignore them.”

To back up his argument, Mr Carlson used inaccurate footage from the UK government’s chief scientific adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance, who mistakenly told the public that 60 per cent of hospitalisations from Covid are among vaccinated people.

Mr Vallance later corrected himself on Twitter, stating that “60 per cent of hospitalisations from covid are currently from unvaccinated people”.

“There are a lot of those people giving you medical advice on television, and you should ignore them,” Mr Carlson said on his show. “The advice they’re giving you isn’t designed to help, it’s designed to make you comply. And you shouldn’t comply mindlessly. You’re an American adult. You’re allowed to ask simple questions and then demand clear answers. That’s why we live here. That’s your birthright.

“Schools across the country are asking students to take the vaccine as a condition of their education. Is that a good idea? Is it rooted in science? We should know the answer to that. Before we can answer that question we need to know how many young people are dying from Covid.”

Meanwhile, earlier that day, Fox News host Steve Doocy on Fox & Friends advocated for the Covid vaccine.

He criticised the Biden administration for not being able to stop vaccine disinformation spreading online: “They have not been able to get Facebook to get rid of some of the disinformation. The disinformation is online: The vaccine is killing lots and lots of people or it changes your DNA or there are little microchips. None of that is true,” he said on the Monday morning show.

Also on Monday, Fox News host Sean Hannity appeared to side with his Fox & Friends co-workers, contradicting Mr Carlson and telling his viewers to take the pandemic “seriously” and stating that believes in the “science of vaccines”.

In direct contrast to Mr Hannity and Doocy’s views, Mr Carlson responded to a clip of Dr Rochelle Walensky, director of the CDC, in which she stated the health crisis was “becoming a pandemic of the unvaccinated”.

“We know lying when we see it and you just saw it,” responded Mr Carlson to the clip. “To say again … this is a pandemic of the unvaccinated is simply untrue.”

Mr Carlson didn’t specifically advise viewers not to take the Covid-19 vaccine. “We’re not saying there’s no benefit to the vaccine, there may well be profound benefits to the vaccine. Our mind is open and has been from the first day. We never encourage anyone to take or not take the vaccine.”

As of July, the Tucker Carlson Tonight show was the highest-rated cable show in the US, averaging 3 million viewers a night, according to Nielsen.

The Independent has contacted Fox News for comment.