John Oliver recruits Alex Trebek, Billy Porter, and more to quash coronavirus conspiracy theories

By
Christian Holub
Christian Holub
Christian Holub

Christian Holub is a writer covering comics and other geeky pop culture. He's still mad about 'Firefly' getting canceled.

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Published on July 20, 2020 12:04PM EDT

2020 continues to be a confusing time. The lockdown and other precautions necessary to stem the flow of coronavirus cases are so different from ordinary life that many people are left feeling confused and disoriented. Increasingly, when people start feeling overwhelmed by aspects of modern life, they turn to conspiracy theories for explanation, and so it is with COVID-19. On Sunday's edition of Last Week Tonight, John Oliver confronted coronavirus conspiracies head-on to explain why people might believe them and why they shouldn't.

Oliver started by talking about the concept of "proportionality bias," the assumption that big events must necessarily have big causes.

"There's a part of me that thinks the royal family had Princess Diana killed," Oliver said as an example. "I know they didn't, because there's absolutely no evidence that they did. But the idea still lingers. It felt too big an event to be accidental. There had to be some intent there."

Given that, it follows that smaller events don't generate as many big explanations. Oliver points out that the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan has not generated nearly as much conspiratorial thinking as the assassination of John F. Kennedy, though presumably if Reagan had been killed the theories would be flying just as fast (it is much easier for Americans to accept that a lone gunman failed to kill the president of the United States than it is to accept that a weird loner successfully did so).

But rather than continue making the case himself, Oliver eventually recruited some celebrity friends to help debunk coronavirus conspiracy theories, including Alex Trebek, John Cena, Billy Porter, Paul Rudd, and others.

"If nobody ever asked questions, Jeopardy! would be a very weird show, wouldn't it?" Trebek said.

"But you gotta be careful, because there's a lot of really convincing-looking s--- on the internet, and most of it ain't true," Porter continued.

Watch the full video above.

For the latest information on coronavirus (COVID-19), including how to protect yourself and what to do if you think you are sick, please visit coronavirus.gov.

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