Howard Stern speaks at the 2018 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony at Cleveland Public Auditorium, Saturday, April 14, 2018, in Cleveland. (Photo by Michael Zorn/Invision/AP)
Howard Stern, one of the highest-paid U.S. radio talk show hosts, has taken on anti-vaxxers with a call for vaccines to be mandatory and for the unvaccinated to be blocked from accessing basic hospital services.
If any American does not get vaccinated and gets sick with covid-19, they should not be allowed to get into a hospital for treatment, said the 67-year-old host of the “The Howard Stern Show” on SiriusXM satellite radio.
Stern is currently working under a five-year contract that has been estimated to be worth as much as $100 million per year, according to CNBC. He has 20 million-plus subscribers, mostly in the U.S.
Stern is famously offensive. Between 1990 and 2004 alone, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) fined owners of radio station licensees that carried “The Howard Stern Show” a total of $2.5 million for content considered to be indecent.
Now he’s calling the unvaccinated “idiots”.
“When are we gonna stop putting up with the idiots in this country and just say it’s mandatory to get vaccinated? F— ’em. F— their freedom. I want my freedom to live,” he said. “I want to get out of the house already. I want to go next door and play chess. I want to go take some pictures. This is bull—.”
During his radio program, Stern criticized the misinformation of anti-vaxxer radio hosts who refused to take the vaccine and later succumbed to covid-19, saying on their death bed they wished they had taken their vaccine.
Stern, who got the vaccine, said he is frustrated by people who refuse to take the vaccine yet clog hospitals after been infected with covid-19.
Vaccine hesitancy is still dominant in the U.S. as the country continues to control the spread of covid.
The highly contagious delta variant, which was first detected in India, is now the dominant strain in the U.S., complicating efforts to get rid of coronavirus.
Anti-vaxxers argue that vaccination is a personal choice and they should be able to control what substances they put in their body.
Some people who are worried about vaccines are also worried about covid-19 risks. They are taking the threat seriously by observing the safety protocols like wearing masks and social distancing, said Margot Savoy, chairwoman of the family and community medicine department at Temple University.
Others do not see the pandemic as much of a threat. For instance, in Wyoming, about a third of the population is vaccinated.
An NBC poll showed that Black Americans were most likely to get vaccinated, with 76 percent saying they were already vaccinated. Whites were most likely to be unvaccinated at 66 percent, while 71 percent of Latinos said they were vaccinated.
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