Bill O'Reilly claims dead Coronavirus patients 'were on their last legs anyway'

Disgraced television host Bill O'Reilly, who paid at least $45 million to settle sexual assault allegations against him, crawled out of the rock he was living under in order to make a completely unwarranted statement about victims of the deadly Coronavirus. In an interview with Sean Hannity on his radio show, O'Reilly had the gall to state that dead Coronavirus patients were apparently "on their last legs anyway," The Huffington Post reports. When Hannity said he would get "hammered" for the callous comment, he simply said he did not care as he was telling the truth. Needless to say, O'Reilly should have stayed under the radar where no one had to listen to him.

The former Fox News host stated on Hannity's show, "Many people who are dying, both here and around the world, were on their last legs anyway, and I don't want to sound callous about that." Hannity responded, "Hold on, you're going to get hammered for that." "Well, I don't care," O'Reilly affirmed. "I mean, a simple man tells the truth." If he was trying to insinuate that he was a simple man who told the truth, he couldn't have been more off the mark. After all, he did lie about not sexually assaulting all those women - and look how that ended. Either way, he couldn't be further from the truth.

While it is true that those with compromised immune systems and the elderly are more at risk, this is not to say that those folks are on their "last legs." Coronavirus has the ability to escalate quickly and prematurely end someone's life. After all, we have seen multiple cases where those above the age of 80 have recovered after contracting the disease as long as they get the medical attention that they need. In addition to this, there have been several news reports about young and healthy people contracting and subsequently succumbing to the disease. Though they did not have any prior medical conditions and were perfectly healthy, they were unable to beat the illness. Evidently, O'Reilly just wanted to make a statement in order to be provocative.

Perhaps, however, he really does have the IQ of a small pea. When Hannity asked him how Americans could get back to life as normal in a simple way, he replied, "Bernie Sanders, you know, he's gone, that's really good for everybody. The projections that you just mentioned are down to 60,000, I don't think it will be that high. 13,000 dead now in the USA." O'Reilly would be erring greatly to disagree with the 60,000 figure. As per a data model used by the White House, the projected Coronavirus death toll dropped to just above 60,000 patients by August this year. Last week, that number stood at 90,000. This is because social distancing measures may just be working. If we disband those measures now, we could be looking at a higher death toll.

The real question is, what does Bernie Sanders have to do with it? If anything, the Vermont Senator's plan to ensure universal healthcare for all would have protected Americans. While still in the race for the 2020 Presidential elections, Sanders was the only candidate to urge voters to stay at home during the primaries and practice self-isolation. Already, we have seen how detrimental a far-right leader with little to no faith in science can be for our public health. The last thing we need is his mouthpiece pretending to understand the complexities of a virus battling it out against a broken public health system.