Yahoo Finance Whoopi Goldberg Rips Bill Maher's 'Flippant' COVID-19 Remarks: 'How Dare You?'
Whoopi Goldberg clashed with Bill Maher over "flippant" comments that the late night host made about COVID-19 safety precautions.
Goldberg, 66, took issue with a monologue delivered by Maher, also 66, on the Friday episode of Real Time with Bill Maher. During his show, Maher criticized the ongoing precautions Americans are continuing to take two years into the COVID-19 pandemic.
"I don't want to live in your paranoid world anymore. Your masked, paranoid world," he told his audience. "You know you go out, it's silly now. You know, you have to have your mask, you have to have a card, you have to have a booster."
Maher added, "They scan your head like you're a cashier and I'm a bunch of bananas. I'm not bananas — you are."
The View
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Goldberg blasted Maher on Monday's episode of The View, where she condemned his remarks and accused Maher of "forgetting" about at-risk people.
"That's not really funny to people who have lost their kids to this … or people who have lost family members or dear friends to this," she said in response to Maher's jokes. "Listen, nobody on the planet really wants to go through this. This is not something we're doing because it's sexually gratifying. This is what we're doing to protect our families.
The View; Vivien Killilea/Getty Images
Goldberg added, "And you don't have to do it, but stay away from everybody, because if you're the one who's not paying attention, and you're coughing and sneezing … then stay out of the public, man. Nobody wants this. I don't want it."
"And I think he's forgetting that people are still at risk who cannot get vaccinated," she continued. "Little kids, under the age of five, or people with health conditions. How dare you be so flippant, man?"
She added later, "I want to point out, there are little kids who can't get vaccinated. Lots of people who cannot get vaccinated, and so you're playing Russian roulette with their lives."
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Maher and Goldberg — who are both vaccinated — have each tested positive for COVID-19. Maher tested positive for the virus in May 2021, while Goldberg tested positive earlier this month.
Maher was forced to cancel his eponymous show over his test results; the comedian was asymptomatic and felt "fine" at the time, according to a statement shared on the Real Time Twitter account in May.
Goldberg, who missed taping The View after testing positive, said she was "shocked" to have contracted COVID-19.
"It was a shock because you know, I'm triple vaxxed, haven't been anywhere, haven't done anything, but that's the thing about the Omicron," Goldberg said on the Jan. 5 episode of The View.
"You just don't know where it is. You don't know where it is, who's got it, who's passing it," she added. "So you know, it's one of those things where you think 'I've done everything I was supposed to do.' "
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