Holding to the cardinal rule that this column never wishes anyone sickness or death (Though there is one person we want to see retired by any means necessary), it is with best wishes for recovery that we note that Fox News host John Roberts has been hospitalized with malaria. The disease gets transferred when one is bitten by an infected mosquito. According to Grok, the disease makes the mosquito the most lethal animal on earth, resulting in an estimated 263 million malaria cases worldwide in 2023, with approximately 597,000 of them being fatal. Roberts has a major advantage in that the majority of these deaths (about 95%) occurred in Africa, with children under five accounting for at least 75% of them.
As for Roberts himself, we have a report from Huffington Post:
Fox News’ John Roberts announced Tuesday that he’s currently off the airwaves with what he described as a “severe case of Malaria.” Roberts revealed on social media that he “somehow came down” with the disease, which can be deadly “if not diagnosed and treated quickly,” per the CDC. “I can honestly say that I am the only person in the hospital with Malaria,” the 68-year-old host posted.
The CDC describes malaria as “a serious disease caused by a parasite that infects a certain type of mosquito” and noted that “most people get malaria from the bite of an infected mosquito.” Around 2,000 cases of the disease are reported in the United States each year, the majority being in people who have traveled abroad, the CDC noted. Severe symptoms can include kidney failure, mental confusion and seizures.
Well, it sucks to be one of the 2,000 Americans infected by the disease, but he is lucky that it was caught because he has a “severe case,” and he later mentioned that his doctor told him that the doctor had never seen a case of malaria here in the U.S. Roberts tweeted:
Thank you to Trace for jumping into the chair today!
I somehow came down with a severe case of Malaria.
I can honestly say that I am the only person in the hospital with Malaria. In fact, one of my doctors said I’m the first case he has ever seen.
Thanks to the folks at… https://t.co/6ZHiB5Dv8v
— John Roberts (@johnrobertsFox) August 26, 2025
Roberts is actually one of the few real journalists at Fox, and though he – of course – leans right, he isn’t some slavish Trump apologist like Brian Kilmeade or any of the evening folks. While fully aware that one best be really, really careful praising Bill Gates in any context – given his purported ties to Jeffrey Epstein, Gates’s work on this disease, by and through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, has likely saved more total lives than any two human beings in all of history (We will not count the inventors of antibiotics or vaccines on this list); using cheap pesticide-treated nets, work on a vaccine, and developing medication regimens that work from even early detection, it is estimated that the Foundation has saved over 12 million lives and taken fatalities down from over one million a year to approximately 600,000.
Nothing indicates that Roberts’ life is in severe danger, though he is not totally out of the woods. It would be interesting to see whether some of Trump’s followers would have treated the problem with raw milk, ivermectin, and leeches, over having anything to do with treatments developed by modern medicine, financed in part by the Gates Foundation and its work with the Centers for Disease Control.
We know what Roberts has wisely chosen. He should be better soon. Roberts is fortunate in one sense. It is possible to envision cheering on mosquitoes in other contexts.
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God Bless: I can be reached at [email protected] and also on X at @JasonMiciak.
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fox IS a parasite and by any means necessary has got to go. you always stand up for the bad guys including the attempted ear 86. you blow me away with your sensitivity to the fascist bad guys. God bless my arse. maybe you should go.
I publish in my own name and provide contact information. If you want to attack me personally, please do so that way.
As for “always standing up for the bad guys” – that’s false and you know it. Perhaps I should let you read some of the threats and hate mail that I get from MAGA.
You are asking me to leave this site bc I wrote that I hope that a reporter (And parent) recovers from malaria rather than dying. Please think about what you are saying.
And John Roberts is not the same as Brian Kilmeade, Jessie Waters, or Laura Ingraham. They are not equally revolting – not even close.
Oh, and yes, I use “God bless” bc I actually believe in Jesus’s teachings. Like Jesus, I am a liberal, and I want conservatives to know it, and know that there are a lot of us.
jason
Jason, we are 100% behind you. And when we disagree, it is very specifically on something you might have said with which we disagree and tell you so in such a way as to encourage a response and honest intellectual argument. I do not sense Instrumental was following those fair argument rules. So, Instrumental, what are you trying to say. I don’t think you were being fair to Jason at all from how I understand your comment.
I would imagine that 99% plus of the MDs in the US have never seen a case of malaria. Give it time, though, and Kennedy will bring it back. There are only a scant handful of species that infect humans, Plasmodium falciparum being the nastiest.
I wonder if climate change may make the disease more prevalent. I don’t know what type of mosquito is most virulent. But given that the disease is mostly associated with Africa, one can guess that it thrives in heat and humidity. One of the most predictable outcomes of climate change is the fact that communicable diseases will move north.
And yes, we know that infectious diseases of all types are on the board again now that we’ve reversed course from vaccinations, the intervention that has saved more lives than any other except antibiotics.
I have seen fewer mosquitoes this year than prior years. Perhaps because of the Republican provided extreme heat. If so, this is the only thing good to come of fascism in my lifetime. We down here in Beulha Land have lived under fascism for a long, long time so we know, or should.
Jason, I always enjoy reading your columns. I think you write in a balanced and straightforward manner.
Please keep it up. It helps.
Adele Griffin
I think more than a few of us do appreciate Jason’s writing. From what I can tell, he tries to mostly take out the emotionalism and simply report the facts. Of course he has personal feelings and I appreciate them as well.