Late night hosts cheer the FDA's Pfizer COVID vaccine approval, jeer the vaccine's name, note Trump's dilemma

"Today the FDA granted full approval to Pfizer's COVID vaccine," Jimmy Fallon said on Monday's Tonight Show. "This is great news, although if it didn't get approved, I'm not really sure what the options were. Pfizer store credit?" The Pfizer vaccine has a new name, too, he said, though "Comirnaty" sounds "more like a drunk person trying to say 'community.'"
"The vaccine isn't the only thing keeping the FDA busy," Fallon said. "They recently had to tell people not to treat COVID with a drug that's given to animals with worms," tweeting: "'You are not a horse. You are not a cow. Seriously, y'all. Stop it.' Meanwhile, the people taking it are like, 'Laugh all you want, but I don't have COVID, and the worms are almost gone.'"
"I gotta admit this, they are absolutely right: You are not a horse," ESPN's Stephen A. Smith said on Jimmy Kimmel Live. "You are not a cow. You're a jackass, though." Seriously, "if the drug you're about to take has a horse on the box, you probably shouldn't take it," he said, before turning to "another crazy thing that's going on with Americans right now," the milk crate challenge. "We're all so worried about COVID, but TikTok is what's gonna kill us," Smith sighed.
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The FDA granting full approval to the Pfizer vaccine "is amazing news that will hopefully convince more people to get vaccinated, and we should all be thrilled," but "what's up with Comirnaty?" Seth Meyers said at Late Night. The vaccine "already had a great name, Pfizer vaccine."
In theory, "another thing that might be helpful is getting Donald Trump, the leader of the Republican Party, to tell his supporters to get it," Meyers said. But Trump has "associated himself with anti-vaxxers and outlets that traffic in vaccine conspiracy theories and lies," so "it should come as no surprise that when Trump told his supporters at a rally over the weekend that they should get the vaccine, well, they did not react well to it."
Tooning Out the News underscored that Trump backtracked when his audience booed.
"Normally when I'm in search of an angry mob of people screaming anti-science deep-state vaccine microchip conspiracy jazz, I head to the heartland of America," The Daily Show's Jordan Klepper said. "But it turns out I can find those very same people right here in my own backyard, in New York City." You can watch that madness below.
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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.
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