As the Omicron variant rips through the country and New York City experiences a record surge in COVID-19 cases headed into the holidays, public health officials have one big message for all Americans over 16 years old: Get your booster right now.
But Fox News viewers got a very different message when they tuned in to The Five on Friday afternoon. According to the channel’s self-described comedy host, you’re better off with “nature’s vaccination.”
“If you urge a booster for Omicron, does that mean you are actually going to end up preventing a more effective kind of vaccination, ‘nature’s vaccination,’ which would raise the natural immunity,” Gutfeld said, adding that this would be “in a safe way” despite the clear increased risk for people who contract the virus without a booster.
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Studies have already found that a third dose of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines significantly reduces the chance of symptomatic infection from Omicron.
Suggesting without evidence that the boosters “may not be that effective,” Gutfeld asked, “Why would you get a booster against what is, effectively, could be a booster,” referring to Omicron itself. “Call me a quack, I don’t care,” he added with a shrug before turning the entire thing into an attack on President Joe Biden.
“That’s what makes Joe Biden kind of a despicable non-leader,” he said. “He hears of Omicron, high-transmission, low severity, and instead of trying to help America regain its sense of normalcy, he redefines it as a ‘winter of death.’”
As of Friday, with the Christmas holiday still a week away, cases were up 31 percent nationwide and deaths were up 23 percent, averaging over 1,200 per day and adding to the more than 800,000 Americans who have died from the virus since it first emerged.
