As theAcademy Awardnominee, 61, wasinducted into the show’s Five-Timers Club, Harrelson not-so-subtly shared some anti-vaccineviews during hisopening monologuewith a joke about a script he recounted reading before theCOVID-19pandemic.
“So, the movie goes like this,” said Harrelson. “The biggest drug cartels in the world get together and buy up all the media and all the politicians and force all the people in the world to stay locked in their homes, and people can only come out if they take the cartel’s drugs and keep taking them over and over.”
Spokespeople forSNLand NBC did not immediately respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment.
After Harrelson’s monologue aired, the star was met with criticism online, with many calling him,SNLand series creatorLorne Michaelsout for platforming lies about the life-saving vaccine.
Will Heath/NBC via Getty
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“With Woody Harrelson’s monologue onSNLlast night,the anti-vax stupidity in America just peaked,” wrote one person. “It’s disappointing that Lorne Michaels would allow this conspiratorial nonsense on his show. It’s probably time for Lorne to retire.”
Rosalind OConnor/NBC via Getty
“Anti-Vaxxerswon’t listen to highly educated peoplewho’ve spent their lives devoted to science and medicine—but they will listen to a guy who they saw in that movie they watched a few years ago,” one other individual posted.
“Whenever anyone spews anti-vax stupidity, I always think of the countless videos of traumatized/crying doctors, nurses and hospital workers who wereclimbing over bodies in Covid’s early days,” another Twitter user wrote. “So yeah, f— Woody Harrelson.”
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TheTrue Detectivealum has shared similar views in the past, tellingVanity Fairlast May of his stance onmasking: “As one who doesn’t believe in the germ theory,I find it rather absurd.”
Harrelson also shared a conspiracy theory linking 5G networks to COVID shortly after the pandemic began in 2020. “I haven’t fully vetted it [but]I find it very interesting,” he wrote in the since-deleted Instagram post, according to theNew York Post.
69.3% of Americans are fully vaccinatedas of Feb. 23, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The organization found in a September 2022 study that aprimary series of the vaccine plus a boosterplayed a larger role in preventing hospitalization than only a primary series did in adults who are and are not immunocompromised.
As information about thecoronavirus pandemicrapidly changes, PEOPLE is committed to providing the most recent data in our coverage. Some of the information in this story may have changed after publication. For the latest on COVID-19, readers are encouraged to use online resources from theCDC,WHOandlocal public health departments.
source: people.com
