Whitney Cummings Just Released a Bizarre Racist Rant about Covid
"Our enemy made a virus on purpose that killed tons of people, broke our economy, broke our brains, let's be honest, then culminated in all of us posting on social media to stop Asian hate. You can't underestimate this level of genius."

A few days ago Whitney Cummings published an episode of her podcast featuring a long, disturbing Sinophobic rant essentially claiming that China engineered Covid as a bioweapon to establish dominance over the US, and also that China manufactures toys designed to undermine children’s education and even poison them.
I’m going to share the full monologue below. It’s quite lengthy, and it comes in the context of Cummings’ attempt to process the recent death of her friend from cancer, which she suggests may have been caused by the Covid vaccine, which she calls the “Maxine” in order to avoid algorithmic penalties. I am not wont to criticize how other people deal with grief, but I think the moral calculus changes somewhat when the person in question is a celebrity conspiracy theorist with millions of followers. I also believe, as a rule, that it is a matter of public concern when influential people say really racist and dangerous shit, and there is quite a bit of racist and dangerous shit in this podcast episode.

Perhaps most disturbing to me is the way Cummings does not seem to remember the Covid pandemic as a period of horrific mass death. With a few exceptions late in the rant, she describes it as a period in which people got a benign—her word—flu-like virus that made them sleepy and stay home for a bit. This strikes me as illustrative of the way many comedians in her shoes metabolized the pandemic: not as a natural disaster that killed millions of people, but as an inconvenience to which Democratic state and local governments launched an overblown response.
The monologue is below, with light commentary throughout.
Cummings: So it made me think of that thing nobody wants to think about because we had to think about it for so long, so much, and we're all sick of it. But it was that thing we all had to stay in our houses for, okay? And we're so wrapped up right now in the "Maxine." We're going to call it the "Maxine" because that's Pat's daughter's name and we're not going to get kicked out of the algorithm if we call it the Maxine. We're so focused on that, and injuries from that, that I think we forgot about the actual virus. Okay? We forgot. We don't really know what that thing did. Right? So also, if you got the Maxine, that also had it in it, right? Yeah, it might've had a bunch of other stuff. We're so focused on the mercury or was there a chip in it or whatever that we keep forgetting about just that straight-up virus, right?
Remember, we all kind of just decided it was the flu because we were so sick of being in our homes? Guilty as charged. By the third time I had it, I was like, "Ah, that wasn't so bad. Let's go back to work. I can't do this anymore." I was so sick of having blue hair and all these vampires pretending to be my friends living in my house during the pandemic that I was like, "It's the flu. We gotta move on." I was like, I just, "I can't. I cannot do this anymore. People will not stop coming over to my house and shooting content with me. I cannot. We need to get back to work." I think I started a cult by accident. Okay? It was the flu. We can't stay inside for another year or I'm going to enroll in the Jordan Peterson Graduate School for Masters. A master's program in why only men should work. because I forgot how to do my job because I've been in my house for so long. I've been Miss Havisham for the past two years, locked in a house with a mask on so that Gavin Newsom could go to the beach and figure out the best place to plant fireworks in peace.
Now the point is I realized that most people are so busy being suspicious of the Maxine and what's being made money off of this awful thing, that people are so focused on those injuries, I think we all kind of forgot about straight-up the actual virus. The problem is anyone who talks about this, because people were like, "It's this long thing," those people, I don't know. And I'm not saying this is what happened to her. I just think that we are totally forgetting that we don't know the long-term effects of this thing at all. And listen to me, okay? Because there were people that were like, "Well, I still have it and there's lingering effects," and those people, we're kind of like, "Eh, no. No, there's not." Those people to us, they just seemed like they were the people that didn't want the sleepover to end. "I have this thing that's never going to go away.”
It seemed like the people that were talking about that or acted like they still had symptoms forever, they're the kind of people that just want to be sick for a living. We all know those people. The same people who can't figure out if they should be ADD or ADHD or OCD because they aren't sure which one is gonna get them the most attention. But true ADD and OCD people would never post about any of that because they could never get the caption finished. And even if they could, they never post it because it wouldn't be perfect. Check my feed this week—not a post in sight.
“We,” of course, have not “forgotten” about the “straight-up actual virus,” and there is a great deal of research into its short- and long-term effects. (Indeed, the people claiming to have long Covid were not lying or exaggerating, and it’s interesting that Cummings mocks them even as she attempts attempts to acknowledge this.) Cummings’ ignorance here seems indicative of the information ecosystem she has been living in for the last five years.
Cummings: So we're all in acceptance that this was man-made, right? That's not a crazy thing to say, is it? I think the common acceptance is this was made as, basically, a bioweapon. Fine. Not saying targeted towards us or anything.
Cohost: People have been researching bioweapons for decades.
Cummings: Yeah, because you gotta research it to then have the cure for it. Makes perfect sense. How could they have that cure ready if they didn't make it in the first place? So, I'm just saying, this doesn't have to feel serious and heavy, if I was going to make a virus in a lab, what's the point of it just being the flu? I don't want us to go back into our houses. I'm not trying to cause any kind of frenzy. Mentally, we can never go back into our houses. That's over. I'm not advocating for that. Whatever this is, as bad as it is, I'm not saying to change our behavior at all. I'm saying we can't go into our homes anymore. Every time anyone goes into their home at this point, they just go online and buy invisible money or marry someone who doesn't exist or watch a mentally insane person talking about being in love with her therapist.
To continue stating the obvious: "we" are not all in acceptance that Covid was man-made. There is no strong evidence for a lab leak scenario—let alone the leak of a deliberately engineered bioweapon—and there is quite a bit of strong evidence for a zoonotic spillover.
Cummings: My point is, with this virus that we all had, we forgot to just ask why they would do it, and what would be the point of making it benign? What would be the point of making a virus in a lab if it didn't cause more harm long-term? What is the point of getting people sick for two weeks? That's like what, fuck, it made us need to buy masks that were made over there. Fine. Okay, wearing the masks. If it stops the spread, fine, sure, but also inhaling the microplastics, that's bad for us. Okay, fine. That's like a good result, right? Good hustle.
First of all: “Benign.”
Second: Note how Cummings starts talking about China without explicitly acknowledging that she’s talking about China. This goes on for some time:
Cummings: It also kept us in our home for two years. For the most part, it forced us to live on the internet, fight with each other. Instead of going to war with us, just make us go to war with ourselves. Genius. Good. I'm in. I'll fund this. I'll fund this thing. I like your pitch. What else? It made us addicted to a bunch of their apps that make us dance, dance and collect mini ratchet Chucky dolls that we put in our school backpacks, even though no kid used backpacks, because they didn't go to school for a couple years, which is why no child can even make eye contact anymore. Love it. Yes. I'm liking this virus so far, mister—
Cohost: It was a bootcamp for the future.
Cummings: Yeah, so so far I like it, but what else? What else? I mean, I see, okay, maybe do it—how about three rounds of it, though? He's like, "Yeah, okay." Is this enough to justify making this thing that we could all get too? We could all get it, so is this—maybe. Well, you know, it also makes everyone really scared, and then they buy a bunch of stuff online that we sell. It's gonna make people stay in their homes and maybe have kids, and we make a lot of kids' toys, all of them. Maybe it's going to make them become sentient technology addicts who live in a state of existential nihilism and only buy things with ephemeral value, and then take selfies with a filter that make them look like cats.
Again, “we” here is clearly China. Cummings is suggesting that China engineered Covid-19 in order to keep people home so they would buy Chinese products, have kids, and buy their kids’ Chinese products. She goes on to argue that China deliberately designs toys that poison children, interfere with their development, and turn them into zombies:
Cummings: You gotta understand this line of thinking isn't particularly toxic. It's kind of just true. Once you have seen the type of toys that are made for children—because it's exclusively where you get toys—and as a parent, I look at all of them—the toys that are made over there for kids, yeah, they're cheap, they're dangerous, covered in chemicals—fine, fine. I'll let that slide. They also break way too easily. All the parts, of course, once they break, you have to get from there again, right? And every part is exactly toddler throat-sized. Okay? Yes. All the animals on the toys look nothing like the real animals in real life. It actively teaches them the wrong thing about truly—the words are spelled wrong! It'll be like you and me," Y-U, and you're like, it's fine if—you don't even spell it like that over there!
What do you, none of the words are spelled how they're spelled. So most of our education system is just teaching kids to unlearn what they learned from their toys that were made over there. Fine. The toys also are fully trying to suck their brains out of their heads. These toys are just drugs. It's like you just press a button and something lights up and it's like, "la la la la." That's it. There's no numbers, there's no ABCs. It's just one nonsense button. It's like Simon, but no "remember the lights and press 'em again." It doesn't, nothing emulates a calculator. It's just getting them addicted to lights. That's truly all it is. And it runs out of batteries after 20 minutes, because batteries are made where again?
The point is you cannot know all this and then decide that that thing we all got—Delta, Beta, weren't there a bunch of strains of it?—is not something that's going to affect us forever. Why don't we ever entertain the idea that it was made to affect us forever, not just older people? I know that it got rid of some older people. I don't know, the statistics are wonky, I'm not gonna chime in. It's weird. It's weird.
This is the first time she acknowledges Covid’s death toll, which she immediately suggests is unreliable.
Cummings: The old people thing is actually odd because one time I went to Hong Kong and I was talking to this guy, he was sitting next to me and he did focus groups for digital art tools or something, and he had to go. And he said when he went over and did them, I'm like, "Oh, what was it like?" He's like, "Actually going and doing this in Asia is really not that useful because everyone just defaults to the oldest person in the room. Because they have such a reverence for anyone older than them, they won't disagree with them." So he's like, it's really hard to ascertain what they think.
And I was like, oh, that's so interesting. And because I'm like a white woman who rescues dogs. I was like, yeah, it's so interesting, the dog thing over there, just the belief that the consuming dogs—not everyone obviously, but just, you know—and he was like, yeah, they would say the same thing about America and your elders, the fact that you just put 'em in nursing homes. And I was like, whoa. So there's a respect for elders, which is really venerable, but not American elders. No, those go first. [Pulling up a graphic of 2024 Olympic medals:] I also have to remind you, in 2024, United States, 14 gold medals. China one. Silver—United States 11, China one. Bronze—United States nine, China two! Two Bronze. Okay. United States, 34 medals; China, four.
This Olympics thing comes out of nowhere, but my read is that she's offering it as another piece of evidence of China’s motivation to undermine US supremacy. As for the dogs thing—I mean, Jesus Christ.
Cummings: So why would they make a virus in a lab that just makes us sleepy for a couple weeks and that's it? And we all conveniently like to joke about the fact that we couldn't taste or smell. Like that was just funny. No one was like, "oh, that's weird." We were like, "I can't taste or smell" and then moved on as if that's not neurological damage. That's neurological damage. Your taste isn't in your nose, it's in your brain. Okay? But maybe part of the whole virus is that you have amnesia because you just wanna move on with your life so badly after being stuck in your house. I don't— do you remember anything from the pandemic? No one thinks it's weird? I looked at my phone, I looked through the memories and I'm like, why is there a photo of me and Bruce Willis in a cab? When did this happen? There's literally fully photos of me sitting on the ground surrounded by wolves. I'm like, what? 2022 and 2023, my photo thing, I'm like, I have no recollection of—there's a photo of me with stitches in my nose. I'm like, what? Did I get a new head? What? Zero recollection. Okay? Yes.
Did gardening become legal in California around that time? [Ed. note: I take this to be a reference to marijuana.] Did I engage a little too much because not being able to do standup makes me actually go insane. Fine, but I wasn't doing that the whole time. Does anyone remember anything? Be serious. Be serious. I truly only remember staring into a ring light for like eight months straight, okay? And we're all wanting to move on so bad that we're not like, hold on. Was there more to this? I don't think we've actually processed this from the perspective of just the virus. Forget the Maxine. I have tried so hard to not think about the pandemic one second longer than I had to that I forgot to even ask questions about it.
So our enemy made a virus on purpose that killed tons of people, broke our economy, broke our brains, let's be honest, then culminated in all of us posting on social media to stop Asian hate. You can't underestimate this level of genius. The fact that we've all just decided, okay, it was this thing, you lost your taste and your smell. You think they just made a virus that turned us into Helen Keller once a year? Why? For what? So we could post about it on TikTok and they could steal our faces and voices to make robots out of—yes, maybe. To then what? Sell their new tongue scraper from the TikTok shop that brings the taste buds back. I don't know. I haven't seen that product yet, but that makes sense. But doesn't feel like this particular country would stop trying to become prom queen of the world so easily.
This is all just racism. I don’t even know what to do with the inconsistency between her description of the virus as benign and her admission here that it killed a lot of people, but I don’t think she does either. The driving logic seems to be paranoia and bigotry.
Cummings: And why do I even care? Why do I even care? I shouldn't care. Because let's be honest, I will live forever. I'm a cockroach. I'm embalmed. My veins are crystallized with adrenaline and whatever toxoplasmosis droplets live in the microphones at the Comedy Store. Whatever was in that virus was like water off a duck's back when it got into my blood, because I grew up drinking water poisoned by DuPont. I drank paint. I am truly made of tin. WiFi goes off around me. It stops working around me. The IT guy that comes over, he's like "the WiFi's down." He's like, "can you go in the other room? I think you're radioactive." I literally, I don't know, but no one's connecting at all because you just can't. Everyone's got—it's chemicals, it's processed foods. My grandfather worked in a coal mine and ate out of a can for 50 years and he lived till 80, but okay, okay.
Why would you make a virus unless it did long-term damage to your target? If Lyme is a bioweapon—we talked about this because of the Justin Timberlake thing—great, you want to make rich people in the New York area. Very tired. Genius. I can see why that would benefit a lot of other countries. You don't want them to die because then you can't get their secrets or you can't get their whatever. Nailed it. Okay? Allegedly. if that's true.
(It’s not.)
Cummings: All I'm asking is can we take a week off of the pyramids, maybe the aliens and JFK, so we can maybe track down the people that made this thing? Can we just get a little—I feel like it's already out there in terms of the viruses out there. We can now go, "What did you do?" Listen, we know the guy who made the Labradoodle, the guy that invented the Labradoodle, we know his name. He wrote a piece for the New York Times saying, "Hey, this was a mistake. I inbred this dog. It's a disaster. It's an awful goblin. There's no such thing as a hypoallergenic dog. It comes from their saliva. This is a scam. I'm sorry."
People who do awful things, they do try and get out from under it sometimes. Okay. Frank Abagnale, the Catch Me If You Can guy, the con artist, he does TED Talks and he says how he did it, why he did it. Chris Hughes, he's the co-founder of Facebook, regularly speaks about how bad Facebook was, how it was designed to be like a slot machine and get you addicted. You don't necessarily do it because you want to. You do it to get out of jail time or have a shot at seeing your kids again. Everyone's got a price. And we need to figure out how to get them to just tell us what you did. You know what? We won't be mad. How about this? I promise not to be mad. If you just tell me—tell me where you were last night. Were you with your ex-girlfriend? You're telling me there's no one who can get the emails or the records or figure out what the goal was?
I’ll leave it there. I would love to give Cummings some credit for finally coming around on the idea that Covid was bad and worth avoiding—and that the mitigations were worth their negative externalities—but her insistence on racist conspiracy theories makes it difficult to take solace in the few things she gets right. It’s all very sad and scary.