On Tuesday, Fox Business host Neil Cavuto informed the public that he has contracted COVID-19—an announcement he used to advise others to get vaccinated. “While I’m somewhat stunned by this news, doctors tell me I’m lucky as well,” Cavuto, who underwent an open-heart surgery in 2016, was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1997, and has previously been treated for cancer, said in a statement released by the network. “Had I not been vaccinated, and with all my medical issues, this would be a far more dire situation. It’s not, because I did and I’m surviving this because I did.” He then expressed his hope that everyone who is still unvaccinated “gets that message loud and clear. Get vaccinated, for yourself and everyone around you.”
While Cavuto’s statement on his health and the vaccine has been frequently discussed on his network’s rivals MSNBC and CNN, Fox News and Fox Business did not immediately discuss his remarks on-air, according to a search using media-monitoring service TVEyes, or on their home pages. Even with Cavuto suddenly absent from the Tuesday and Wednesday editions of Fox Business’s Cavuto Coast to Coast, the program’s fill-in host, David Asman, failed to mention his COVID-19 diagnosis or otherwise explain his absence to the audience. His situation was not discussed until the Wednesday airing of Cavuto’s later show on Fox News, Your World with Neil Cavuto. “Neil Cavuto has tested positive for COVID-19,” said the program’s fill-in host, Charles Payne. “I want everybody to know that he’s feeling fine. He’s a fighter and we look forward to getting him back in his chair as soon as possible.”
A number of Cavuto’s colleagues at Fox have made pro-vaccine endorsements of their own, including Dana Perino, Greg Gutfeld, and Bill Hemmer. Rupert Murdoch is, of course, also vaccinated, and the COVID-19 safety protocols instituted at the Fox News offices are actually more stringent than those outlined in the Biden administration’s employee vaccine mandate. But over the past six months, Fox News has been a nightly destination for anti-vax rhetoric, with Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham, and Sean Hannity using their prime-time shows to characterize vaccine and mask mandates as attacks on constitutional liberties; allege that Joe Biden is utilizing the vaccine to force Christians out of the military; and boost misinformation claiming that the COVID-19 vaccine is linked to thousands of deaths.
As recently as Monday, Carlson used the coronavirus-related death of Colin Powell to suggest that getting vaccinated is all but pointless. “Like almost everyone his age, Colin Powell was fully vaccinated against COVID, and yet according to his family and doctors, Colin Powell died of COVID,” said Carlson, failing to note that Powell, 84, suffered from multiple myeloma cancer and Parkinson’s disease and therefore had a severely weakened immune system. This fact was not acknowledged by Carlson, who went on to say that Powell’s death shows Americans that “you’ve been lied to. Vaccines may be highly useful for some people, but across a population, they do not solve COVID.”
On Tuesday, CNN anchor John King attempted to counter Carlson’s anti-vax rhetoric by opening up about his own personal health history. “I’m going to share a secret I’ve never spoken before: I’m immunocompromised. I have multiple sclerosis. So I’m grateful you’re all vaccinated,” King informed his audience. “I am grateful my employer says all of these amazing people who work on the floor, who came in here for the last 18 months when we were doing this, are vaccinated now that we have vaccines.” The host, who expressed his worries about bringing COVID-19 “home to my 10-year-old son who can’t get a vaccine,” noted that while he does “not like the government telling me what to do. I don’t like my boss telling me what to do. In this case, it’s important.”
King specifically addressed Carlson’s “reckless” claim that Americans are being “lied” to about the need for mass vaccination. “Every now and then something big comes along, forgive me Fox News, what makes America exceptional, is when we all decide to set apart, set down our personal principles or our personal preferences for the good of the team,” he said. “The good of the team here is to come together and not spread that.” During an appearance on Boston Public Radio, King discussed the segment by saying his remarks about his medical history were not planned. “It just pissed me off, and it came out,” he said, adding: “When you have this misinformation about vaccines in a way that threatens people—727,000 Americans have died of COVID. They are all American treasures, just like General Powell was. If we can do anything to protect them, we should do it, even if we have to set aside a personal preference or personal principle.”
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