Trevor Noah: Covid to be ‘one of those anti-virus pop-ups’ you never delete

Trevor Noah

On the Daily Show, Trevor Noah reacted to news that experts no longer believe that herd immunity – the point at which enough Americans are protected from the coronavirus that the pathogen dies out, long considered by many the endpoint of the pandemic – is achievable in the US. Instead, due to several factors including widespread vaccine hesitancy, experts believe the virus will probably circulate through the US at manageable levels for years to come.

“Honestly, in these divided times, it’s just great to see all Americans coming together to fail at something so easily achievable,” said Noah. “Thanks to the many people who refuse to take a life-saving vaccine, experts now think that coronavirus is basically going to become one of those anti-virus pop-ups, you know? We’re going to minimize it but we’ll never really delete it.

“If you can get vaccinated but you haven’t yet, well this should be all the incentive you need, because you don’t want to be getting corona 10 years from now,” the host added. “I mean think about it – not only could you die, but you’ll be getting roasted for being out of date.”

Related: Stephen Colbert on Biden’s speech: ‘Hasn’t felt that normal in five years’

And while the fading away of herd immunity as a goal owes considerably to anti-vaxxers, “one thing that definitely isn’t helping is the media”, Noah continued, “because I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but the media loves running stories about the few people who are having adverse reactions to the vaccine.

“Even though those cases are the tiny minority, those are the stories that people want to hear the most,” pointing to stories about singular, isolated cases of people with intense side-effects to the life-saving vaccine. “Local news isn’t running stories about how all the people with no side-effects are having a fine time because, let’s be honest, that news just wouldn’t sell.”

Seth Meyers

On Late Night, Seth Meyers recapped the FBI’s raid of Rudy Giuliani’s New York home and office for information related to his dealings in Ukraine as a personal representative of Donald Trump. In his ceaseless public appearances, the former mayor of New York has denied any wrongdoing and decried the federal search as a violation of attorney-client privilege, since he was “acting on behalf of the president and no one else”.

“Yeah, and he’s also under multiple criminal investigations, I don’t think that sounds as exculpatory as you think it does,” Meyers retorted, mimicking Giuliani: ‘I’m not corrupt, I was just working day and night for someone who was corrupt.’

“I know what he’s saying, which is that a lot of the communications and documents are covered by attorney-client privilege, which I get, and that’s true,” Meyers said. “But I’m not sure everything on Rudy’s devices was covered by attorney-client privilege since, you know, he went on TV and read it aloud to everyone.”

Meyers played several Fox News clips in which Giuliani read personal email correspondence from his iPad on-air. “I’m no legal expert, but I’m pretty sure attorney-client privilege goes away when you read the documents out loud on national television,” Meyers said. “It’s like the dumb, criminal version of your grandma reading you a funny meme she found on Facebook.

“In case you don’t remember – and I really hope, for the sake of your mental health, that you don’t,” Meyers explained, “this whole thing apparently revolved around a scheme cooked up by Rudy and his gang of weirdos to dig up dirt on the Bidens during the election and extort Ukraine in order to get that dirt, which was what Trump was impeached for the first time.

“It’s amazing that these guys were so corrupt, they’re still being investigated for what they were accused of during Trump’s first impeachment trial,” the host added, “which if I’m remembering correctly, was approximately 800 years ago.”

Jimmy Kimmel

And in Los Angeles, Jimmy Kimmel checked in on the Utah senator Mitt Romney, one of the few Republicans who voted to convict Trump during his second impeachment trial in February, who was booed relentlessly at the Utah Republican state convention over the weekend. “Aren’t you embarrassed?” he asked the crowd that was drowning out his speech.

“No, they’re not embarrassed,” Kimmel said. “Like their leader, they are incapable of shame.

“And of course, all that was music to the ears of one Donald J Trump, who released a statement – this is what he does now that he can’t tweet,” Kimmel added, drawing up the 45th president’s amateur-looking memo in which Trump said it was “so nice to see Rino [Republican In Name Only] booed off the stage” and called Romney a “stone cold loser”.

“Thanks for the memo, Don, we’ll make sure to fax that to Mitt,” Kimmel deadpanned. “Why are Trump’s losers always ‘stone cold’? Do they have to be kept at a certain temperature like the vaccine or something?”