Jimmy Kimmel Mocks Trump’s Offer to Help Russia With Plague Outbreak: 'The Gang Who Brought Polio Back'

Jimmy Kimmel is not optimistic about America's ability to stop a possible new pandemic.

On the Monday, October 5, edition of Jimmy Kimmel Live!, the comedian took aim at Donald Trump's offer to help Russia deal with a "scary" outbreak of a pneumonic plague.

"No worries," Kimmel sarcastically quipped. "The gang who brought polio back is on the case.”

Kimmel was referring to a 28-year-old researcher who died from severe pneumonia at Siberia’s Irkutsk Anti-Plague Institute after a lab incident. As a result of the incident, 200 people have reportedly been placed in quarantine.

The comedian opened his monologue discussing a rise of illnesses in New York, where his staff had just visited.

“We took 200 members of our staff to Brooklyn. I am pleased to announce that only half of them came back with the flu,” he joked. “Everyone is out sick. Everybody is sick today. Although, I guess we’re lucky to just have the flu.”

Kimmel also noted that New York governor Kathy Hochul had declared a "state disaster" because of an outbreak of measles in the state.

"So now we got the flu, we got measles, we got rabies, we got West Nile virus, we have flea-born typhus, all on the rise,” he sighed.

The comedian then turned his attention to the situation in Russia.

“And now we are hearing that in Russia there has been at least one death from a suspected case of the plague, the pneumonic plague,” Kimmel said, joking that the White House was “monitoring the situation and assessing options to figure out if there is any way they can make money off of it.”

He then played a clip of President Trump saying the White House was following the situation “very strongly,” adding, “We’ll help them.”

The comment made Kimmel quip about the "gang who brought polio back," referring to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose anti-vax leadership has led to the rise of once-eradicated diseases like measles. Polio is not among the old diseases on the rise the United States, though anti-vax citizens who refuse the polio vaccine are vulnerable to the disease.

The story has raised anxiety about another potential global epidemic just six years after the outbreak of COVID-19, but there is not yet indication that there is a plague spreading through Russia, nor confirmation that the late researcher was even infected with an illness contracted in the lab.

Furthermore, medical experts said that while the pneumonic plague is quite deadly, it spreads far less easily than COVID-19. The illness spreads through respiratory droplets that don't travel far, and unlike COVID-19, people must be symptomatic to spread the illness.

The pneumonic plague is also treatable through antibiotics, provided patients begin treatment within 48 hours of symptoms.