Tucker Carlson’s 5 Takes on COVID

Tucker Carlson on August 7, 2021, in Esztergom, Hungary. Janos Kummer/Getty Images

On April 24, the “Tucker Carlson Tonight” host and Fox News parted ways. Fox News stocks fell by as much as 5 percent on the same day, while Tucker Carlson’s Twitter profile gained about 700,000 followers in less than a week.

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, Carlson has been routinely criticized for his COVID commentaries that opposed the mainstream narrative.

Yet many would argue that Carlson’s commentaries were a rare source of reason over the past three fear-plagued years.

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Prominent cardiologist and leading COVID-19 vaccine critic Dr. Peter McCullough told The Epoch Times that Carlson was “on track” about the significant factors influencing society.

“He made great contributions over the last two years,” McCullough said.

“People recognize that he is genuinely telling the truth, and even if they don’t agree with his interpretation, in general, his comments are factual and reasonable,” Dr. David Bell, public health physician and former medical officer and scientist at the World Health Organization (WHO), told The Epoch Times over the phone.

Here is how Carlson weighed in on some of the critical topics throughout the pandemic.

Origins of SARS-CoV-2

Carlson, a prominent voice calling for a thorough investigation into the origins of COVID-19, was among the few eminent TV hosts open to the possibility of a Wuhan lab leak origin.

“Maybe an animal transmitted it to researchers, and the Chinese government didn’t quarantine those researchers. That’s an entirely reasonable possibility, as reasonable as any other explanation,” Carlson suggested in a segment of his show in September 2020.

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Hong Kong virologist Dr. Li-Meng Yan appeared in the same episode. Yan researched SARS-CoV-2 in China and later fled to the United States. She told Carlson that she believed the virus was engineered and intentionally released to infect the globe.

He was critical of media and political commentary that argued against calling COVID-19 by the name “Wuhan virus” because they claimed it would be offensive and racist.

“Now is not the time to indulge in the lowest and dumbest kind of identity politics,” Carlson said in a February 2020 segment. “In times of crisis, euphemisms kill. You need accuracy and clear language in the way you talk about the threat. It’s essential.”

On Feb. 23, 2022, the Wall Street Journal reported on a classified report from the U.S. Energy Department that concluded COVID-19 likely originated from a lab leak.

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“We know perfectly well COVID came from, we’ve known this for years,” Carlson said on his show in 2023, commenting on this report. “One of the very first things we knew about COVID was that it was an engineered virus that escaped somehow, intentionally or not, from a Chinese military biolab in Wuhan.”

COVID-19 Severity

Carlson’s stance on COVID-19 severity has shifted throughout the pandemic.

Early in the pandemic, mainstream health authorities argued that the risks of COVID-19 were “minuscule” and that the flu posed a more significant concern. Carlson, however, citing data from the WHO at the time, expressed concern that the COVID-19 virus could be 30 times more dangerous than the flu and that the health system might be unable to handle this virus.

A subsequent study showed that the COVID-19 case fatality rate is less than 1 percent, significantly lower than the 3.4 percent reported by the WHO early in the pandemic.

“We now know … that the virus isn’t that deadly,” Carlson said in a segment aired on May 22, 2020. “An enormous percentage of coronavirus infections produce mild symptoms or no symptoms at all. They’re asymptomatic. The death toll is a tiny fraction of what we were told it would be.”

Vaccine Adverse Events

Carlson was a leading critic of the push to vaccinate and the censorship of discussing adverse events since the initial vaccine rollouts.

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He questioned the efficacy of vaccines and raised concerns about their safety but has not advocated against getting vaccinated.

With the advent of the vaccine rollout, Twitter and Facebook implemented new misinformation policies. Posts about COVID-19 vaccinations deemed to be false or misleading were removed. This also led to the closure of Facebook groups discussing vaccine reactions.

In December 2020, Carlson expressed that these actions would erode trust.

“None of this inspires confidence,” he said on “Tucker Carlson Tonight.” “Censorship will not convince a single person to take the coronavirus vaccine. In fact, it will have the opposite effect.”

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At first, Carlson favored vaccination for vulnerable people, but he has been against mandating it.

“I thought that American physicians agreed that compulsory medical care was unethical, it was immoral, and it could never be imposed on anyone,” he said on Jan. 21, 2022.

In April 2021, Carlson cast doubt on vaccine safety after adverse events of blood clotting and bleeding appeared in those who took the J&J vaccine.

On May 5, 2021, Carlson raised concern about deaths after COVID-19 vaccinations. He cited data from the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS), saying 3,362 people died after getting the shots between late December to April 2021.

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McCullough said Carlson would be the first to cite VAERS data on primetime television.

In June 2021, the WHO published its COVID-19 vaccine recommendations, writing that “children should not be vaccinated for the moment.”

“There is not yet enough evidence on the use of vaccines against COVID-19 in children to make recommendations for children to be vaccinated against COVID-19,” the WHO added.

Carlson interpreted this vaccine recommendation as indicating that the vaccines were harmful to children.

“The drugs are too dangerous. There’s not nearly enough data to understand the long-term effects or to show that the benefits are worth the risk that they bring,” Carlson said.

“Judging by the VAERS reporting system, we can be certain that some will be harmed. Beyond that, we can’t be sure. We aren’t even sure what effects this vaccine will have on the elderly—the one group we were told from day one should take the vaccine as quickly as possible.”

Carlson’s most recent comments on COVID-19 vaccines came from the “Tucker Carlson Tonight” show aired on April 19, 2023.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a 2024 presidential candidate and the founder of Children’s Health Defense, a not-for-profit activist group for childhood vaccine safety, joined Carlson.

Carlson introduced Kennedy as someone who knew early on that “the COVID vaccines were both ineffective and potentially dangerous.”

Masking

Carlson was initially in favor of voluntary masking.

“Of course, masks work,” he said in a segment in late March 2020, while also raising the concern that masks were becoming difficult to source.

He later changed his take on masking in July 2020, saying there was “no basis of any kind in science” on mask-wearing.

However, Carlson has always been critical of mask mandates, arguing that the mandates were implemented more for political reasons than public health.

In discussing the Virginian lawsuit that ruled to allow parents to opt their children out of wearing masks, Carlson repeated ruling judge Louise DiMatteo’s comments.

“Louise DiMatteo made a highly revealing statement: ‘I’m not going to decide who’s right and who’s wrong on masking,’ she said. ‘This is really about the hierarchy of authority.’ Well, exactly. That really is what it’s about. After more than two years of COVID restrictions, there’s not a huge amount of scientific debate over masks on children,” Carlson said.

“The only debate left, as the judge pointed out, is not to debate over science. It’s a debate about power.”

In January 2023, research gold standard Cochrane published a review concluding masking does not slow the spread of COVID-19.

Lockdowns

Carlson has been critical of lockdowns, arguing that they have been harmful to individuals and society and do not help control the spread of the virus.

Carlson said in a segment on his show in November 2020, “The evidence is in. Lockdowns don’t work. They don’t make us safe. They don’t stop the virus. They do cause enormous harm, though, especially to the poor and the middle class.”

Studies have shown conflicting benefits of lockdowns. For example, a study by the University of California found that early lockdowns prevented infections by 56 percent, but they came with a decline in GDP, employment, customer spending, and satisfaction. Contrastingly, a Johns Hopkins study showed that lockdowns only reduced COVID-19 mortalities by 0.2 percent on average (pdf).

Carlson has also criticized government officials for imposing strict lockdown measures while failing to adequately support businesses and individuals struggling due to the pandemic.