Late night hosts cheer the CDC's unmasking news and Ohio's vaccine lottery, ponder how we got here

last updated 14 May 2021

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention just dropped some happy news, Jimmy Fallon said on Thursday's Tonight Show. "Yeah, if you are fully vaccinated, you can go back to doing the things you did before the pandemic — well, not everything. If you're Trump, you still can't tweet." Now that vaccinated people can ditch their masks, he said, "honest to God, the next time I hear 'N95,' it better be in 50 years when I'm playing BINGO."

"As if getting vaccinated so you can return to a normal life isn't enough incentive," Ohio is giving five vaccinated adults $1 million each in a new lottery, Fallon said. Vaccinated New Yorkers will get free Shake Shack fries, though Mayor Bill de Blasio ruined that announcement. "The sound you just heard was every New Yorker puking and then packing for Ohio," he joked. "Somehow de Blasio did the impossible — he made people want to stop eating French fries."

"French fries are nice," but Ohio's lottery gimmick "blows everything else away," Trevor Noah said at The Daily Show. Maybe saving humanity should be incentive enough, but "have you seen humanity? It's full of jerks who will only get vaccinated if there's money in it for them," he said. "Hopefully this does convince some anti-vaxxers to get the shot. The only awkward part is that if they actually win, then they're going to have to explain to their anti-vax friends how they got rich."

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"Unfortunately, there's no way to know who's vaccinated and who isn't, and the majority of the population still isn't, which means we'll be relying on people who aren't responsible enough to get vaccinated to be responsible enough to wear masks," Jimmy Kimmel noted at Kimmel Live. Ohio's lottery "sounds great, but you know somebody's going to get vaccinated like 40 times to try to increase their odds," he added. "Can you imagine being in a country like India right now, where people all around you are dying because they don't have the vaccine, we're over her begging and bribing people to get it?"

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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.