“The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” has been off the last couple of weeks, so Colbert didn’t get to comment on one of the biggest and saddest/most enraging stories of the last few weeks: People who refuse to take a COVID-19 vaccine but will take medicine intended for livestock when they catch the potentially deadly illness.
So when he returned on Tuesday night, Colbert kicked off the new episode with a cold open gag that mocked those people, via a parody of the 1960s sitcom “Mister Ed.”
As you certainly know by now, the newest quack medical advice being propagated by people who refuse to take a vaccine is that COVID-19 can be treated using Ivermectin, a de-worming medication primarily used to treat livestock. Health authorities have warned people not to take the medication, which has not been proven to have any effect on COVID. In addition, several high profile antivaxxer COVID patients who have taken Ivermectin have died. It has also been linked to a spike in poison center calls in states where antivaxxer and COVID denialist sentiments are high.
As always, the cold open gag began with a recap of the situation video news clips. Then came the “Mr. Ed” parody.
NOTE: For those of you who don’t know, the show’s premise was that a human man becomes best friends with a Horse, Mister Ed, who can talk and has exceptional intelligence.
So, first the gag showed an edited clip from a Season 3 episode where Mister Ed appears as a surgeon in a dream sequence. In the gag, we see Ed prescribe Ivermectin for plenty of things — but he recommends death for a human who broke his leg. Then came a parody of the show’s famous theme song, which went like so”
“A horse is a horse, of course, of course/don’t trust it as a medical source/that is of course unless the horse/is the famous Doctor Ed”
Watch the whole clip above.