During his closing monologue on Friday's broadcast of HBO's "Real Time," host Bill Maher said that people who promoted bad policies and approaches during the coronavirus pandemic have avoided acknowledging their mistakes and "a lot of the dissenting opinions that were suppressed and ridiculed at the time have proven to be correct. Maybe that's why the powers that be never wanted a COVID commission." Maher also said that we haven't learned anything from the pandemic, and one example is the continued use of gain-of-function research.