The Late Show on pause following Stephen Colbert’s COVID “recurrence”
Despite what you heard, the pandemic is not over, which is why The Late Show is on hiatus until further notice
Aux News Stephen Colbert
There will be no Late Show for the second day in a row thanks to COVID. How can this be? Why isn’t the pandemic over? Despite what you’ve heard, we’re still in the middle of this thing and crossing another grim milestone this week: One million COVID deaths in America and six million worldwide. And that’s just reported deaths.
A good reminder of how serious COVID-19 continues to be is that celebrities are also still getting infected. There was an outbreak at the White House Correspondents Dinner last week. Just today, Bill Gates announced that he contracted the virus. Apropos of nothing: It’s never too late to get vaccinated and boosted so that, like them, your chances of a minor-ish case are stronger. But even minor cases can be pretty severe and can result in Long COVID, so, yeah, maybe a mask in crowds wouldn’t be a bad idea either.
Another reminder that you can actually see: The Late Show With Stephen Colbert is on a temporary hiatus because Colbert tested positive, again. “Stephen is experiencing symptoms consistent with a recurrence of COVID,” The Late Show Twitter account posted yesterday. “Out of an abundance of caution for his staff, guests, and audience, he will be isolating for a few additional days. As a result, the Late Show will not be taping new episodes until further notice.”
Colbert’s been struggling with COVID for the past few weeks. Per The Hollywood Reporter, he tested positive on April 21st. “Yep! I tested positive for Covid, but basically I’m feeling fine- grateful to be vaxxed and boosted,” Colbert tweeted. “Thank you for the well wishes. This just proves that I will do anything to avoid interviewing Jason Bateman.”
Shortly after, Grammy-winner and Late Show bandleader Jon Batiste also tested positive, and so have Colbert’s fellow late-night hosts. Seth Meyers, James Corden, and Jimmy Kimmel all tested positive recently. It’s almost as if hosting a show inside where a crowd of people laughs directly at you is still kind of dangerous, and maybe having some easy-to-follow rules in place for the benefit of public safety was a good thing.
We wish Colbert and his late-night compatriots a speedy recovery. Everyone else, stay safe.
64 Comments
milestone this week: One million —> milestone this week: one millionWhite House Correspondents Dinner —> White House Correspondents’ DinnerThe Late Show Twitter account —> the Late Show Twitter accountGrammy-winner —> Grammy winnerhosting a show inside where a crowd of people —> Jesus H. Christ
God, this schtick is boring.
You just need to reach out and apply. At this point it’s just passive aggressive.
Maybe they can’t afford to move to LA.
Is the official name not “The Late Show”
Pretty sure “The” is part of the official title of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert…
It is, they are very wrong. Being a pedantic asshole on the internet is fun until somebody more pedantic proves you wrong, amirite? /internet high-five!
The sentence still needs a regular “the”, though. You can’t use the one from The Late Show just because it happens to be the same word
One million COVID deaths in America and six million worldwide. And that’s just reported deaths.
I’ve seen Russell Brand disagree with this, and he has over 5.6 million subscribers on Youtube.
A significant part of why we’re not out of this is because many people think they’re smarter than the world’s medical consensus.
I wish things were different.
People are stupid, and stupid people will continue to drag us down. And cause deaths of those we love. The only silver lining is that people we don’t love are dying of it too. That’s what I’ve come to; taking solace in the fact that I resent these people enough to wish them dead. Not slowly and painfully, just as quickly as possible.
Unquote. Boy, I’m glad that wasn’t my sad, jaded opinion! It would be horrible to be so angry and tired and cynical! Ha! Ha, right! Ha ha ha.. ha…… ha…… ha…….. ha
If anyone trusts Russell Brand with their health, they get what they deserve.
Problem with that is they can share what they get with those that don’t deserve it. And it’s not just about trusting Russell Brand, but accepting his “ask questions and think for yourself” philosophy as a license to reach conclusions that generally puts the health of others at risk.
“Ask questions and think for yourself” is a good mantra if you ask the right questions of the right people. Asking for medical advice from random commentators on the internet whose medical training ended with high-school biology is like asking cousin Dwayne to rebuild your car engine because he once made a steam engine for a science project.
It also seems some people believe “thinking for yourself” means your conclusions need to be uniquely personal to you, even if they disagree with a general global consensus (because otherwise your thinking isn’t yours, is it).
Not all rebellions are in the right.
The “own the libs” crap has helped me realize just how much I don’t like people forming their opinions just based on being the opposite of other people, even the opposite of people I don’t like.
You know how I think for myself? I think to myself, ‘Self, you have no medical training or expertise whatsoever. Listen to medical professionals.”
Yeah, sometimes if you’re “just asking questions” the answer genuinely is what you’ve been told all along, especially if what you’ve been told has been told to you by people who know what the heck they’re talking about.
“Ask questions and think for yourself” should include “while using the scientific method.”
The “ask questions and think for yourself” philosophy has probably lead to way more tragedy than anyone could imagine.
I would argue that there’s nothing wrong with an “ask questions and think for yourself” philosophy as long as you’re able to recognize that you may not be an expert in a field and that “thinking for yourself” is not a substitute for the years (often decades) of experience and expertise a lot of the experts actually do have. Too many use it as an excuse just to do what they want to do regardless of how it may have a direct or indirect negative impact on others.
The problem with “doing your own research” is that most people’s research stops when they find any source that agrees with what they want to believe, no matter how specious.
Something Russell Brand posted early in the pandemic (the post wasn’t related to COVID) spoke to me and I was like this guy gets it, I’m gonna follow him. But then I started seeing other stuff he posted and I was like wtf this guy is crazypants, I’m gonna unfollow him immediately and always be ashamed that I thought he was some kind of genius.There, I’ve told you my secret shame.
I used to watch his comedy show and enjoyed his brash enthusiasm.
Then I saw he had a Youtube channel and thought that’d be cool to watch.
Nope.
most of these assholes once they get their own platforms they start to think it’s a freelance to show and spread their crazy. i guess he lost katy perry for a legit reason.
Ponderland was so much fun. The Christmas episodes especially. sigh…
Very similar thing happened to me. It was a depressing slow descent into madness and I noped out of there as fast as I could
this guy is crazypantsIt’s all part of his … Brand…Thanks everyone! I’ll let myself out now.
He’s definitely on the Glenn Greenwald/Matt Taibbi/Dennis Miller line of descent into lunacy.
o no, taibbi too? i actually liked him.
I really did too, but he’s turned.
Over the years he has said a number of things with which I agree and a number I haven’t. You should not be ashamed.
I disagree with it, too. The numbers are probably much higher.
Every so often I read the comments on posts the WHO make on Instagram for a depressing chuckle. It’s just always filled with people screaming “LIES” at the World Health Organization.
It’s partially your average rube thinking they’re smarter than medical professionals, but the government bears a lot of responsibility for this. From whiplash messaging in the early days of the pandemic, to an overall anemic response to how to mitigate it, to finally throwing up their hands and saying official policy was everyone just gets COVID, we have absolutely surrendered and lost to the virus.
A significant part of why we’re not out of this is because many people think they’re smarter than the world’s medical consensus.This is my father. He is one of the million dead. He didn’t get vaccinated due to “some severe non-fatal side effects in the elderly” for vaccines and because he believed (without any test results to back it up, mind you) that he’d had a mild case early on that conferred him enough immunity to skip vaccination.
I’m sorry to hear that.
My dad also is unvaccinated. … Yeah, we don’t get along (for other reasons of which his unvaccination is merely a symptom).
Russell Brand is a poor man’s Yahoo Serious
At this point, Covid is a religion more than anything else. And gimme that old time religion!
If you mean how religions have made people sick and caused deaths, then yes.
More like cult like behavior and mass participation in meaningless, symbolic theater.
Nah, it’s a public health issue, mate. Anything else you experience is the product of your imagination.
I assume you mean cult-like behavior in the sense of denying science, reason, and basic common sense in favor of blindly following the harmful ideology of demagogues who are only interested in benefiting themselves, right? That cult-like behavior?
i think it’s definitely a disease more than it’s a religion.
It sure as hell isn’t over. A huge number of my colleagues have been out with Covid for the past month, including one of my bosses who is getting absolutely smashed by long-Covid. He managed to come in one day before crashing again and being stuck in bed for a week.A mate of mine got it in January and is still barely functional five months later. He’s lost 25kg and is in really poor shape.I’ve been lucky to avoid it so far.
I know so many folks who are sick/covid positive right now. A friend of mine has missed three weeks of work with his “mild to moderate” case of covid. He’s vaccinated and boosted and still feels like he was hit by a truck. He’s regretting loosening his pandemic precautions—he stopped masking for like a week and immediately caught it, after two years of strict mask wearing and not getting infected. Another friend has parents who are both very Republican and very avid fans of cruise vacations. They signed up for cruises the day they started rebooking them. They just went on another cruise two weeks ago. No masks, no vaccine mandates or health checks. Yesterday her dad tested positive for covid and today her mom did. A lot of people have been fooled by the way the CDC changed the goal posts for measuring how bad covid was in a county/state. When they switched over to using hospitalizations as their key metric, all the counties went green overnight, but the overall case counts per 100,000 people never got to where they needed to be (sustained below 5-10 per 100,000) to be considered low under the old rubrics. And so the new metrics made everyone feel safe, all the mandates lifted, and look where we are: in 4 weeks, my county has gone from 11 cases per 100,000 to around 120 per 100,000. But we’re still classified as “low” because hospitalizations are low (but trending up again, because human beings are stupid and don’t learn from the past). I’ve managed to avoid it so far through a combination of luck and diligence. I see the people who roll their eyes at me still wearing my N95 mask in the grocery store. I hear people say that I should loosen up because I’m triple vaccinated and my case will likely be mild. Oh yeah? Sure, maybe. But you know what, would rather not chance long covid. So many of the people I know who have had covid have technically recovered, but not fully. Even the ones who don’t have long covid per se still have lingering after effects. Loss of taste or smell. Bouts of brain fog or fatigue that set in out of nowhere. No thanks.
I feel you about getting stared at for wearing a mask. I’ve been getting the same looks lately that I did at the very beginning of the pandemic when no one near me was wearing anything and they all gawped at me like I was an extraterrestrial.Between Covid, the flu, colds, and seasonal allergies, I’m pretty much N95 for life at this point.
What an absolutely miserable way to go through life.
I was born three months premature and have lived nearly five decades with cerebral palsy. By comparison, wearing a small piece of fabric over my nose and mouth in certain public situations is hardly what I’d consider a hardship, much less miserable, but I suppose for some it’s too big a burden to bear.
I just don’t like pretending.
I bet those million Americans would like to pretend they’re not dead.
To each his own, I guess.
But still alive, so that’s nice.
I’m one of the only people who continues to insist on wearing a mask at the gym. I’m so uncomfortable around all the other unmasked people that I pretty much only use one set of machines that is in a separate part of the room and which is under an air vent so that I know air is constantly circulating around me.
My wife and I just had it for about a week. We’re both vaxxed and boosted, but the chest cold we both had for a week was very real. It wasn’t bad, but I wouldn’t want it again.
Damn! I had it in January and it was like a real lousy cold for a day, then the most mild cold you can have for a week. Sorry to hear about your friend 🙁
The US has 1/6 of all worldwide COVID deaths.Just let that sink in.
“muh freedoms!” or some dumb shit
Morbidly curious about what the upcoming elections are gonna look like because of just the population impact of all of this.
Considering all the state legislatures that are frantically restricting voting, I don’t think conservative COVID deaths will balance that out.
Yeah, because China has definitely recorded all of its Covid deaths.
The last few sentences really hit the mark. I laugh when I hear people today say, “out of an abundance of caution,” because they don’t say it until after they’re sick. I wonder if Stephen Colbert would say, “My doctor told me I have syphilis, so I’ve decided to wear a condom sometimes” and then feel so proud of himself. He’s getting it backwards. Caution was supposed to come first. Now is the time for treatment, introspection, then change.
The “abundance of caution” may be that he’s not testing positive anymore but is still experiencing symptoms.
I feel this. Tonight, I’m going to a whiskey tasting I haven’t been able to attend since 2019 thanks to this dumb plague, and I’m nervous. I’m boosted, so I’m not worried about my own health so much. But I do work in customer service, which means I have a lot of opportunities to get others sick if I should get infected. (I always wear a mask at work, but that only slightly lessens the anxiety.)
I had Covid 3 months ago and while it passed quickly, I’ve since developed long-haul symptoms like increased forgetfulness and a recurring gastrointestinal issue.At the time, I figured “so I get it and it passes,” but now would kindly remind everyone that some of the long-term symptoms suck versus wearing a mask and smart Covid-avoidance techniques.
I’m a professional chef, and it still amazes me that we made it through the last two seasons at the ski resort I work at without a shut down. That said, I’ve been without a mask for nearly a year, but after a couple minutes at the local thrift store where -everyone- was wearing a mask, I just reached in my backpack and pulled one out. It’s the new normal, folk. Get used to it.