Bill Maher Mocks Young People Worried About Getting Covid: ‘Grow a Pair!’

Comic and pundit Bill Maher mocked young people who worry about contracting Covid-19, telling them to “grow a pair!”

On Friday night’s edition of HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher, the host conducted his customary “Overtime” segment with guests Fiona Hill, Ira Glasser, and Matt Welch.

Maher opened the segment with another helping of his now-regular dismissiveness about Covid, blasting young people who are worried about getting the disease:

Maher: So I have a, I’m sorry, I have a correction, I did make a mistake. It was Sonia Sotomayor on the Supreme Court who asked Gorsuch to wear a mask. I said it was Stephen Breyer, Stephen Breyer. I said he know it was, but same difference. If you’re around my point, my point was if you’re around an eighty-three year old,

Ira Glasser: That’s what my grandchildren say to me. Oh, right, they don’t want to visit me anymore because they’re afraid of infecting me.

Maher: Right? But you look healthy as a horse.

Ira Glasser: Not much healthier than that.

Maher: Exactly.

Maher: You know what? I didn’t… I didn’t get to this in the show, but one of the things in the David Leonhardt article I read about this week that I thought was so sad was that he made the point that older people are the ones who should be more scared of the virus. And it’s the reverse. It’s younger people.

They have so scared the kids. They’ve raised them. They’ve coddled them, they helicopter parent, and they bulldoze parent them to the point where they’re afraid of their own shadow. They have like a minuscule possibility, unless you’re having some… Yes, people with co-morbidities do. But mostly, I mean, you got the good immune system, just to read these statistics. About a quarter of the 18 to 34 year old being very worried. Very worried. Oh fuck. Grow a pair.

Matt Welch: If they go to college on the East or West Coast, they have booster requirements. They have incredible restrictions. I mean, imagine anyone in this country between the ages of 16 and 23 who have had to go through this, like the normal stuff of adolescence and youth. You’ve just had it really shut down.

Young people are driving transmission of the disease to others in this latest wave, and while less likely to become seriously ill, are still at risk for severe persistent symptoms, hospitalization, and death.

Watch above via HBO.