Towards the end of last week, many of the late night shows taped without an audience in an effort to combat the spread of the coronavirus. On Sunday, John Oliver joined them.
"Both the place we normally tape on Sundays and our office building both had confirmed cases of coronavirus this week," Oliver says at the start his monologue. "So our staff has been working from home, and we're currently taping this somewhere else, with a very limited crew."
The focus of the last Last Week Tonight episode for a while? COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus. Oliver already did a segment on the virus a couple of weeks back, but this time his focus is on the escalation, the reaction, and — crucially — what we can do about it.
The host starts by criticising Donald Trump's question-avoiding tactics at a recent press conference ("That is a level of dodging responsibility that Trump has been perfecting ever since he was very much not in Vietnam.") before sharing some advice with viewers.
"Look, I know things are currently very scary," Oliver says. "And things are going to be weird for a while. For weeks, and honestly, more likely months. And the fact that that is true makes it even more important that going forward, we're going to need to look out for one another. And not just in terms of containing the transmission of this virus, but also in terms of the economic impact this is going to have on people who may well not be able to weather it."
Oliver's advice? Calling elderly relatives and neighbours, donating to food banks if you can afford to, and tuning out misinformation ("from sources like, sadly, the president").
"Take care of yourself," Oliver concludes. "Take care of each other. And we will be back, in some form, some time in the future. And until then, stay safe and good night."
Topics Health John Oliver COVID-19
