Bill Maher slams liberal media for 'scaring the s**t' out of Americans for exaggerating the number COVID-19 breakthrough cases

 Late night talk show host Bill Maher blamed 'liberal media' for scaring Americans by conflating how common COVID-19 breakthrough cases are.

Maher, who had tested positive for COVID while vaccinated in May, expressed his frustration with on Jimmy Kimmel Live on Wednesday after he read a poll that showed nearly a majority of Democrats believed breakthrough cases were much more common than they actually are. 

Maher said Democrats seemed to believe that there was a 50 percent chance for vaccinated people to catch COVID and a 49 per cent chance that they'll be hospitalized because of it. 

Estimates show a one to 10,000 chance of a breakthrough infection, with a hospitalization rate of one per 100,000, the New York Times reported.

'Democrats thought it was way, way, way higher than it really was,' Maher said. 'Liberal media has to take a little responsibility for scaring the s— out of people.' 

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Bill Maher, left, told Jimmy Kimmel that the liberal media had been propagating fears of COVID-19 breakthrough cases, which are rare

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Vaccinated Americans have about a 1 to 10,000 chance of catching a breakthrough infection

Maher, host of HBO's Real Time, said the media outlets were actually making it harder to the US to return to normal by constantly stroking people's fears of COVID, and that their reporting on breakthrough infections could actually hurt the vaccination effort. 

'The reason why I'm bringing this up is because it's much harder for every touring act to sell tickets in blue states. They're afraid to go out of the house. In red states, it's all good to go.' 

Maher said he was not against vaccines, citing that he recently got a booster shot, and said Americans needed to come together and get vaccinated to end the pandemic.

'Bottom line is we know, if you're vaccinated, you almost never die from it,' he added.

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Maher, who suffered from a breakthrough infection, said vaccines still help Americans avoid death and hospitalizations. He has also received a booster shot

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The overwhelming majority of Covid hospitalizations and deaths in 2021 have occurred in unvaccinated Americans, a DailyMail.com analysis of federal data shows

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Moderna reported that said those who received the first wave of its vaccines were twice as likely to get a breakthrough infection than those who received it since December 2020

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that Americans who have received two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccine or one shot of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine have a less than one in 13,000 chance of a severe breakthrough case

More than 99 per cent of Covid hospitalizations and deaths in the U.S. since January 2021 have occurred in unvaccinated people.

Moderna made an additional report that said those who received the first wave of its vaccines were twice as likely to get a breakthrough infection than those who received it since December 2020.  

Those patients who do require hospital care due to a breakthrough case are likely to be older or to suffer from underlying medical conditions, the CDC data suggest.

The data demonstrate how well vaccines continue to work, even against the Delta variant, at preventing serious illness.

The Pfizer, Moderna, and J&J vaccines have all proven incredibly effective at protecting against severe Covid disease - both in clinical trials and in the real world.

As a result, the vast majority of Covid patients filling up emergency rooms and intensive care units across the country are unvaccinated.