Joy Behar of “The View” has a message for attendees of the popular talk show who aren’t vaccinated.
On Tuesday’s show, co-host Whoopi Goldberg cited new findings from The Washington Post about child vaccination rates.
“This is so crazy, but as cold and flu season arrive, a new Washington Post poll found that 1 in 6 American parents are rejecting vaccine recommendations,” the 69-year-old told the audience. “The majority of parents still support immunizations, but there’s been a declining trust in childhood vaccines since the pandemic. When did people stop trusting their pediatricians? That’s the person who has your baby.”
Flabbergasted by the poll results, Goldberg shifted her focus to the audience to conduct an impromptu survey.
“Can I just ask one question?” she stated. “Everybody that has been vaccinated in this audience, just put your hands up.”
The panel noted that “everyone” raised their hands, prompting the EGOT winner to say, “And you’re all still alive. I’m just checking.”
Sunny Hostin began to call the statistic “terrifying,” but before she could finish, Behar said, “If you’re not [vaccinated], don’t come back.”
“There’s this notion out there that, ‘I don’t have to get vaccinated because everyone else is vaccinated, and there will be this herd immunity,’” Hostin said.
However, she explained that in order to achieve “herd immunity,” 95% of the population needs to be vaccinated — yet currently, “there are only 92% of kids that are immunized against measles, mumps, rubella, polio.”
“Do you know how many children can become severely ill or perhaps, god forbid, die? And we know now that global immunization efforts have saved an estimated 154 million lives. That’s six lives every minute,” Hostin said. “Ninety-five percent of those lives are children. As a parent myself, I had both of my kids vaccinated, but I do wonder why a parent would make the choice not to protect their child?”
Behar followed up and stated that parents are refusing to vaccinate their kids because they’re getting their information from “the top.”
“We have come in this country to the point where the head of health and human services is being run by somebody who has no degree in health or human services,” she said. “You might as well give me the job.”
