Bill Maher Rips Into the Media for Not Covering One of the Leading Pandemic Risk Factors

In an exclusive Daily Wire interview, Bill Maher criticized the media for its improper coverage of the pandemic and the causes of its severity. By downplaying the dangers of obesity, members of the media now have “blood of [their] hands.”

Citing a CDC study, Maher explained, “Seventy-eight percent of the people who died or are hospitalized are obese. And that’s another one that’s not a popular opinion to talk about, but I feel like I have to because it’s such a salient fact in this,” Maher said. “If you just said to somebody, ‘Okay, there’s an x-factor in this … this x-factor accounts for 78% who die or go to the hospital.’ Wouldn’t you be curious? If you were a news organization, wouldn’t you be talking about that fact all the time?”

From the same study, the CDC reports that overweight individuals represented 27.8% of hospitalizations while a shocking 50.2% of hospitalizations were from various categories of obese individuals. Additionally, 73.3% of the deaths recorded were from the combination of overweight and obese individuals.

Maher’s condemnation of the media appears justified as instead of correctly citing a major contributor to the severity of COVID, the media instead reported death tolls and hospitalizations. Although appealing to a network’s viewership essentially rules out calling them overweight or obese, it is still their responsibility to disseminate the truth.

Maher explains that while COVID will become milder, obesity will continue to be the “real epidemic” that is not spoken about. Maher defended himself by saying he is “not fat-shaming, I’m fat-splaining.” He continued “beauty is in the eye of the beholder, absolutely, but science is not. Science is not, and those facts are unforgiving when you look at the number of people who died. And you didn’t have to be that much overweight to have a much worse outcome having to go to the hospital, having to get ventilated.”

Maher finished his tirade against the pandemic and the media encouraging discourse about obesity. “Anyone in the media who doesn’t talk about this because you’re so afraid of the reaction, you have blood on your hands because you are not doing these people a favor.”

He continued by calling for a program to deal with obesity instead of allowing it to continue. In his interview, Maher hits the nail on the head. Americans ought to be more worried about controlling internal health factors, like weight, in order to help control the pandemic. The media, to no one’s surprise, opted to prioritize views and sponsorships over reality. Given that the CDC data was released over a year ago, it is downright criminal for members of the media to have taken the path that they did.

Maher is certainly right in this situation. If we want to stop the pandemic, then we need to first talk about controlling obesity.