Pete Davidson Compares SNL to AIDS: ‘It’s Still Here, It’s Just No One’s Gotten Excited About It Since The ’90s’

Pete Davidson mocked his own show during Saturday Night Live’s Weekend Update, comparing SNL to AIDS by saying “it’s still here, it’s just no one’s gotten excited about it since the ’90s.”

Weekend Update co-host Colin Jost introduced Davidson, saying that the CDC had announced that fully-vaccinated people no longer needed to wear masks, but some were “still feeling anxiety and say they’re not ready to go fully maskless yet.”

“You wouldn’t know this because your life’s perfect,” said Davidson, “but it’s Mental Health Awareness month and my therapist said it’s important to practice self-care, which is why she stopped taking my calls.”

Davidson joked about how the pandemic had some benefits like “getting Chrissy Teigen out of our lives” and how he had hoped that wearing masks might make it harder for people to recognize him “but it didn’t work because everyone can still recognize me from my eyes.”

“If you see someone who looks like he just woke up and hasn’t slept in days, it’s me,” Davidson said.

Davidson was already dealing with anxiety before the pandemic, he explained, so “my brain didn’t have room for something new to panic about — like I can’t start being afraid public restrooms will give me Covid when I was already afraid they would give me AIDS.”

“You can’t get AIDS from a toilet,” Jost responded.

“AIDS is a lot like SNL,” said Davidson. “It’s still here, it’s just no one’s gotten excited about it since the ’90s.”

“Lorne actually wrote that,” Davidson added, referring to show creator and producer Lorne Michaels. The audience — and Jost — cracked up. “That was his joke.”

Watch the video above, via NBC.