Comedian Bill Maher, host of HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher,” repeatedly slammed the political left during his show on Friday for its handling of the pandemic while Florida has managed to have better outcomes than many other states while also having significantly fewer restrictions.
Maher made the remarks during a panel discussion with Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) and liberal journalist Bari Weiss.
“I asked for the COVID deaths by state, this is per 100,000 people,” Maher said. “The worst is Mississippi. My home state [of] New Jersey, four, fourth worst. New York, sixth worst. West Virginia and Massachusetts are 10 and 11, right together. Could there be two states who are more unalike than West Virginia and Massachusetts? And the poster boy for keeping s*** open was Florida, they’re down at 17. So New York and New Jersey did worse than Florida.”
“We did worse because we’re a densely populated hub of international travel,” Torres claimed.
“Florida is home to all the old people in America,” Maher fired back. “What this is saying … Florida, like, stayed open. I mean, I was just in Florida. I’ve been there a few times since this started. The atmosphere is just different. I’m not moving to Florida, I’m not promoting Florida. I’m just saying AOC just went to Florida and had a good time without a mask [on].”
“I’m just saying I’ve been to Florida, the atmosphere was just night and day from California, which was gloomy, and everything was the Andromeda Strain out there,” Maher added. “And you went to Florida, and I’m just saying, yes, there are different factors … but basically, it’s like they stayed open and went on with life, and they didn’t do a hell of a lot worse, and maybe did better.”
“AOC went to Florida and had a good time without a mask hugging people.” @BillMaher points out open Florida has done better on COVID than NY: “The poster boy for keeping shit open was Florida. They are down at 17. So New York and New Jersey did worse than Florida.” #RealTime pic.twitter.com/qRo2bejUMr
— Brent Baker 🇺🇦 🇮🇱 (@BrentHBaker) January 22, 2022
Weiss, a former New York Times writer, also slammed the pandemic restrictions, saying that she was “done with COVID.”
“We were told you get the vaccine, you get the vaccine and you get back to normal. And we haven’t gotten back to normal. And it’s ridiculous at this point,” Weiss said. “I know that so many of my liberal and progressive friends are with me on this and they do not want to say it out loud because they are scared to be called anti-vaxxed or to be called science denial or to be smeared as a Trumper.
“I’m sorry,” she continued, “but if you believe the science, you will look at the data that we did not have two years ago and you will find out that cloth masks do not do anything. You will realize that you can show your vaccine passport at a restaurant and still be asymptomatic in carrying Omicron. And you realize, most importantly, that this will be remembered by the younger generation as a catastrophic moral crime.”
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