RUSH TRANSCRIPT:
COLBERT: “Folks, I come to you tonight breathing easy, because the White House has finally announced, they plan to end the Covid public health emergency in may. Take that Covid, we beat you. Shove that up your nose and rotate it five times! This has been a long time coming. I wish I could see the smiles on the faces in my audience. And I wish I could, too. Because they’re still wearing masks. The end is near, the end is near! This is a huge moment, after all the Covid we’ve been through— the delta variant, omicron, omicron ba-2, xbb.1.5, z-95, the home of classic rock. For the record, the White House isn’t saying Covid is gone. Just that we’re past the worst of it, and we can now treat the virus as “an endemic threat to public health that can be managed.” So, Covid’s no longer an emergency, just a disease we’re all going to live with forever.”