A New York Times photographer was caught on a hot mic joking about a vaccine for the coronavirus.
New York Times photographer Doug Mills was caught joking about a coronavirus vaccine on Monday to Fox News White House correspondent John Roberts.
“You can take off the mask. The case fatality rate is like 0.1 to 0.3, according to USC,” said Roberts to Mills while walking into the press briefing room. Roberts was citing a study conducted by University of Southern California researchers that concluded the mortality rate from COVID-19 was significantly smaller than previously estimated.
“Is it really?” Mills responded. “Everybody here’s been vaccinated anyway.”
“USC and L.A. County public health came out with a study that found that there are 7,000 cases in California, but they really believe that there are anywhere from 221,000 to 442,000 people who are infected,” Roberts said about the details of the study.
“So, it was a hoax,” Mills said, to which Roberts replied, “No, I don’t think it was a hoax.”
More than 2.5 million people have tested positive for the coronavirus globally. Of those, more than 175,000 have died from it, and more than 678,000 have recovered. The United States has seen at least 816,000 confirmed cases, with more than 43,900 deaths and nearly 75,000 reported recoveries. More than 4,035,860 people have been tested for the virus, according to the latest reading of the Johns Hopkins University tracker.
