Whoopi Goldberg didn’t take kindly to fellow comedian Bill Maher‘s recent remarks about COVID-19 precautions going too far across the country.
The HBO host of Real Time with Bill Maher, who himself was diagnosed with COVID about nine months ago, joked with his audience on Friday about being tired of pandemic safety measures with which the nation has been grappling for nearly two years.
“I don’t want to live in your paranoid world anymore,” Maher told his audience goers during his Friday night opening monologue. “It’s silly now. You mask. You have to have a card. You have to have a booster. They scan your head like you’re a cashier and I’m a bunch of bananas. I’m not bananas. You are.”
Those comments didn’t sit well with Goldberg, who recently recovered from COVID herself. Goldberg criticized Maher for making light of an illness that the World Health Organization says has killed more than 5.5 million people across the globe, including more than 865,000 Americans, according to the New York Times.
“That’s not really funny to people who’ve lost their kids to this [virus] or people who’ve lost family members or dear friends to this,” she said during the latest episode of The View on Monday.
“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. And you don’t have to do it, but stay away from everybody.”
“Nobody wants this. I don’t want it,” Goldberg continued. “And I think he’s forgetting that people are still at risk who cannot get vaccinated. Little kids under the age of five. Or people with health conditions. How dare you be so flippant, man.”
So far Maher hasn’t publicly responded to Goldberg’s comments.
Fellow The View co-host Sarah Haines said she fears COVID-19 precautions have become a permanent part of society. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) officials have said they expect the pandemic to end sometime this year as COVID-19 becomes an “endemic” illness around the world.
“There’s a new normal,” Haines said. “I think some of the things we’ve learned in this pandemic are going to stay the same. I may never ride a subway again without a mask. I may never go indoors with big crowds and never feel comfortable without a mask. And that’s up to me to do that.”
Maher said on Friday that the pandemic has “just gone on too long.”
“Nobody cares anymore,” he said. “People want to know when can I get back to not going to the gym. Hopefully, we’re getting out of this s–t soon. I can’t take it much more.”
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