Late night talk show host Bill Maher blamed 'liberal media' for scaring Americans by conflating how common COVID-19 breakthrough cases are.
Maher, who had tested positive for COVID while vaccinated in May, expressed his frustration with on Jimmy Kimmel Live on Wednesday after he read a poll that showed nearly a majority of Democrats believed breakthrough cases were much more common than they actually are.
Maher said Democrats seemed to believe that there was a 50 percent chance for vaccinated people to catch COVID and a 49 per cent chance that they'll be hospitalized because of it.
Estimates show a one to 10,000 chance of a breakthrough infection, with a hospitalization rate of one per 100,000, the New York Times reported.
'Democrats thought it was way, way, way higher than it really was,' Maher said. 'Liberal media has to take a little responsibility for scaring the s— out of people.'
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Bill Maher, left, told Jimmy Kimmel that the liberal media had been propagating fears of COVID-19 breakthrough cases, which are rare
Vaccinated Americans have about a 1 to 10,000 chance of catching a breakthrough infection
Maher, host of HBO's Real Time, said the media outlets were actually making it harder to the US to return to normal by constantly stroking people's fears of COVID, and that their reporting on breakthrough infections could actually hurt the vaccination effort.
'The reason why I'm bringing this up is because it's much harder for every touring act to sell tickets in blue states. They're afraid to go out of the house. In red states, it's all good to go.'
Maher said he was not against vaccines, citing that he recently got a booster shot, and said Americans needed to come together and get vaccinated to end the pandemic.
'Bottom line is we know, if you're
