After another chaotic and frustrating week of news about problems related to the spread of the COVID-19 vaccine, ‘Saturday Night Live’ took a few pushes at a beleagured governor Gavin Newsom and his own handling of the pandemic .
In the opening sketch of the late-comedy show, dr. Anthony Fauci, played by Kate McKinnon, portrayed the character of Newsom as “hated by every person in California except for the ten people he dined with in Napa that time.”
Asked how things are going in California, Newsom, played by Alex Moffat, replied: “Teeth, white. Body you. Covid, pretty bad. ”
He was joined on stage by two other governors for making news: Andrew Cuomo (Pete Davidson) in New York and Gretchen Whitmer (Cecily Strong) in Michigan. The three served as judges in a made-up contest program called ‘So You Think You Can Get the Vaccine’.
“The vaccine should not be a competition,” Fauci (McKinnon) explained. “But Americans will only want it if it means someone else can’t.”
These punches come days after the news broke that a California program designed to improve the availability of COVID-19 vaccines in hard-hit black and Latino communities is being abused by the rich and more privileged. Special access codes were provided to community groups to distribute to underserved areas – but the codes began to be distributed in email and group texts among younger people who were not yet eligible for the vaccination.
As for those who qualify to receive their first or second vaccine, confusion over who can make an appointment – and where – continues to frustrate older residents, as well as younger family members trying to visit the state’s website for their most vulnerable loved ones.
Newsom, who is now notorious for the Napa Valley dinner with a lobbyist and a few others during the pandemic, continues to criticize, also facing the possibility of a by-election in the fall. Many of the arguments are about the closure of small businesses and schools, as well as the state’s deficient vaccination of vaccines. Critics have also seized the billions of dollars in fraudulent payments made by the state’s unemployment office.
In New York, Cuomo, who was seen as a star early in the pandemic, was also in the hot seat – with allegations of sexual harassment in the news, as well as his decision to send older COVID-19 patients back to nursing homes. and then apparently the numbers of nursing home patients who died apparently darkened.
At the end of this week’s SNL spoof, the three governors agreed to give the vaccine to an 85-year-old contestant who was a doctor of the army, now just the world’s proudest grandfather. “They congratulated him and told him to make an appointment ‘online’.
“On what?” asked the 85-year-old confused. Maybe he could ask a younger person for help on the internet, he said.
Cuomo, played by Davidson, reacts seriously:
“Does he have three consecutive days to help you click on the refresh?”