Right-wing radio host Dennis Prager is best known for being relentlessly Islamophobic and misogynistic. When newly elected Rep. Keith Ellison of Minnesota, who is a practicing Muslim, planned to have his swearing-in take place with his hand on a Quran, Prager was making headlines saying that unless someone was “incapable of taking an oath on [the Bible], don’t serve in Congress,” connecting Ellison’s faith with that of the 9/11 hijackers who drove planes into the Twin Towers, the Pentagon, and a field in southern Pennsylvania. Subsequently, Prager penned an op-ed about how feminism was terrible because it made women less domesticated.

In the past year and change, like a good dirtbag conservative, Prager has attacked basic public health guidelines, and in general has been a conservative conspiracy theorist arguing for bad public health policies in the name of “individual choice,” something he does not offer up to women when it comes to their own reproductive health. On Monday, Prager told his audience that he had contracted COVID-19. Whether or not he really has it is hard to know, as Prager is a perennial liar and conspiracy theorist, and it is hard to take much of anything people like Prager say at face value. Prager opened his show by saying he wanted his audience to know that he had tested positive for COVID-19 and that it was for the best “It is infinitely preferable to have natural immunity than vaccine immunity and that is what I have hoped for the entire time,” he blathered.

In fact, Prager totally wanted to catch COVID-19. For real. “Hence… I have engaged with strangers, constantly hugging them, taking photos with them knowing that I was making myself very susceptible to getting COVID. Which is, indeed, as bizarre as it sounded, what I wanted, in the hope I would achieve natural immunity and be taken care of by therapeutics. That is exactly what has happened.” Prager then went on to say a whole lot of stuff about how much money he was spending on everything BUT a free vaccine to fight COVID-19.

What kind of statement includes the phrase “constantly hugging them”? 

Telling his audience that he was doing his show from home because of his positive test, Prager said he was not vaccinated and that he tested positive for COVID “last week.” He also gave the good news that “At no point was I in danger of hospitalization. I have received monoclonal antibodies, that’s Regeneron. I have, of course, for years—a year and a half, not years—been taking hydroxychloroquine from the beginning, with zinc. I’ve taken z-pack, azithromycin, as the Zelenko protocol would have it. I have taken ivermectin. I have done what a person should do if one is not going to get vaccinated.”

You can read about the dubious Dr. Zelenko and his useless “protocol” here.

Before having an alleged doctor call in to talk in one very long run-on and circuitous sentence about something to do with hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, Prager does what right-wing radio talk shows do best: self-promotion. He asks his audience “to think about this for a moment, let’s say I died of COVID. That would make national headlines: ‘Another unvaccinated talk show host dies of COVID,’ correct?” He further blurts out that a conservative host that gets COVID and recovers would not be reported on by the “media” because the media’s “lies” are also promulgated by way of its “omissions.” Prager then turned his mic off and coughed twice before coming back on to speak with some guy who congratulates Prager on getting the “golden ticket” of natural immunity.

The irony that one calls it the “golden ticket,” a reference to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, where only five tickets are given out to the entire world and this is somehow what people should be attempting to “get” instead of a free vaccine, is lost on right-wing radio audiences for eternity. The “doctor” and Prager then go on to imply there is some vast public health conspiracy going on to stop people from getting the hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin they want, and that secret conspiracist doctors want to prescribe to fight COVID-19. 

You can pick up your hydroxychloroquine prescription for anywhere between $13-$300 at a participating Walmart, but you’ll need to see how much your insurance covers. As far as ivermectin—it’s about $90 for 20 three-milligram tablets. Again, check insurance. Also, according to Prager’s show, you have to have your doctor tell the pharmacist it’s for a parasitic infection—NOT COVID! How about that Regeneron, those “artificially synthesized copies of the antibodies that people produce naturally when their immune system fights off infection”? 

Regeneron costs the U.S. government, also known as the taxpayers in this case, about $2,100 per dose of the “artificially synthesized” antibodies. That doesn’t include the costs of being administered the drugs, so you’ll have to contact your insurance on that. The vaccines costs about the same as flu vaccines cost the government, or a lot less than $2,100. As to whether or not “natural immunity” is better than what is received by the vaccine, the data at this point goes both ways, with more research arguing that the resulting protections are very similar, if not the same. However, if you have caught COVID-19 and you also have gotten vaccinated you are as immunized as you can be.

Prager handles a few more calls, mostly from people telling their trials and tribulations in trying to secure ivermectin instead of just getting vaccinated. At one point, Prager repeats the debunked and dubious claims that brought ivermectin into our pandemic vocabulary: that the area of Uttar Prudish in India was cured of COVID-19 by widespread ivermectin use. It was not. It is not. There remains no scientifically provable data that shows ivermectin does anything more than get rid of parasites.

Has Dennis Prager actually tested positive for COVID-19? Is Dennis Prager an unvaccinated believer? Has Dennis Prager been taking the regimen of medications he claims he’s been taking for the time he’s been taking them? Who knows? It’s hard to tell what is real and what is political con artist-theater for guys like Prager these days.

Here’s Prager doing what he does, and possibly sick with COVID-19.

YouTube Video