On ‘Conan,’ Bill Burr Delivers The Perfect Response To Anti-Vaxxers

Late night hosts are responding to the relatively small, but significant amount of the population who are refusing to receive a COVID-19 vaccination, by incorporating their beliefs into comedy skits. 

Anti-vax attitudes can range wildly, from mere hesitancy sparked by institutional distrust and general unease, to full-blown conspiracy theories involving miniscule microchips, forced sterilization, and even mass-murder. 

On TikTok, a fun social media platform where misinformation spreads like wildfire, some unvaccinated users even believe they will inherit the Earth, soon to become the lone survivors of a mass extinction sparked by COVID-19 vaccines. 

Late night hosts might not be particularly qualified to combat misinformation, but entertainment can perhaps help dissolve the deep distrust held by vaccine skeptics, if handled correctly. 

Jimmy Kimmel famously hosted a skit titled “A Message for the Anti-Vaccine Movement,” but the montage was widely viewed as tone-deaf and condescending, with the intent seemingly to humiliate, rather than reassure, vaccine skeptics – not a great strategy for changing minds. 

A recent appearance on Conan by comedian Bill Burr utilized a slightly different approach, as Burr wielded a combination of humor and twisted logic to speak to vaccine skeptics. 

Burr noted that if our evil overlords actually wanted to cause a mass extinction, than perhaps it wouldn’t be in their best interests to target the “sheeple,” i.e., the obedient, brainwashed masses who agreed to take the vaccine. 

Burr compared anti-vaxxers to Fonzie, from Happy Days, being too cool to listen to “the man.” And if those rebellious, leather-jacket-clad vaccine skeptics are the only ones left alive, then perhaps those evil overlords might just have engineered a serious problem, by removing those helpfully submissive “sheeple.” 

Burr, of course, is mocking vaccine skeptics, but by utilizing a perverse kind of logic that corresponds to their worst fears, perhaps Burr might prompt some to laugh at the idea, and maybe even themselves. 

Burr went on to target the lowest-hanging fruit of the conspiracy theory world, flat-Earthers, and provocatively joked about wanting the pandemic to continue, just to ease traffic congestion. 

But when it comes to giving conspiratorial personalities a tongue-in-cheek talking to, Burr has a gift for making his ideological opponents chuckle – he famously chastised Joe Rogan for his casual coronavirus skepticism, and had Rogan practically in tears of laughter. 

Mocking people without coming across as a patronizing elitist is an incredibly difficult feat, and Burr seems to understand how to walk across that line, without stumbling.