UC San Diego Public Health professor Richard Robinson has demanded his classes’ midterms continue in person despite a severe outbreak of COVID-19 among his students. In a podcasted lecture that documented his announcement, most of the audio of Robinson proved unintelligible. After several consecutive minutes of coughing, some words were picked up by the transcript: “I’m NOT sick! My immune system is impeccable!” Upon further questioning from students in attendance, Robinson clarified, “Vaccines and masks are useless. What’s all this fear-mongering about health, anyway? If we could survive the plague, we can survive a tiny cold.”
Several students reported that Robinson had also exhibited increasingly hostile behavior towards preventative care. One anonymous student who was kicked out of lecture explained, “All I did was wear a mask.” He sniffled. “I didn’t want to fail my midterms!” Robinson, upon overhearing the student, told him to “toughen up.”
When asked to comment on his policies, Robinson said, “Masks aren’t needed, you’ll get dependent on them! I would know. It was like, the first thing we learned in med school. Or something.”
