Sorry, can’t find any better sources for this.
The animator then asked Maher what the “downside” of “getting a vaccine” was, which caused the comedian to go on an anti-vax tirade.
“The fact that you the fact that you don’t even have a clue what’s the cost of getting a vaccine that you don’t know the answer to that. You completely want to shut your eyes to the fact that there are repercussions to all medical interventions, including a vaccine, all vaccines,” he ranted. “They come, they say side effects, just like every medication does. You can see it in the literature. They can’t write it on their back on the vaccine. So you have to dig them. And of course, there is a vaccine court because so many people have been injured.”
Maher is one of those older guys who thinks they figured everything out 30 years ago and doesn’t need to try any more. The epitome of a lazy, entitled boomer.
The problem with Bill Maher has nothing to do with his age. He sucks, it’s true, but lots of guys exactly the same age as him do not suck.
lots of guys exactly the same age as him do not suck.
I get that but it’s absolutely connected to his age. He’s spent the last 30 years in a bubble of wealth and privilege and has never had any pressure to update his thinking.
This. He has no idea what it’s like to be an average person anymore so his commentary is disconnected and misses the point. The guy lives in an echo chamber… I honestly can’t believe he still has a show because I don’t know anyone that still watches.
It’s always easier to stay still as you get older. You have to start to fight to improve.
So, you’re admitting it’s not about his age. It’s about his wealth.
If that’s what you’re saying I’m with you. Ageism is as wrong as any other bigotry.
Well, TIL. For some reason, despite not really knowing anything about him, I had the impression that he’s a reasonable guy.
The epitome of a lazy, entitled boomer.
Right, because that kind of intellectual arrogance is definitely a generational trait that us Millennials and Zoomers don’t ever need to worry about.
So much generational bullshit that people buy into these days. What garbage.
Right, because that kind of intellectual arrogance is definitely a generational trait that us Millennials and Zoomers don’t ever need to worry about.
Your words, not mine,
So much generational bullshit that people buy into these days. What garbage.
In your rush to take offense, you missed my point completely. I’ll paraphrase:
Older people (omitting any triggering mention of boomers) can often struggle to keep their opinions and thinking relevant as they can become less receptive to new information.
It was true 100 years ago and it’ll be true 100 years from now.
Older people (omitting any triggering mention of boomers) can often struggle to keep their opinions and thinking relevant as they can become less receptive to new information.
It’s got nothing to do with age or receptivity to new information. Vaccines aren’t new. This isn’t an instance of an old person not understanding something that came about “past their time.” Furthermore, there are plenty of younger people who are on the anti-vax bandwagon, so I’m not sure what your obsession with age is.
I don’t think I’ve misunderstood you at all; I just think your opinion is wrong, bigoted, and ignorant.
“Explain to me how the vaccine is bad.”
“OMG dude you’re so dumb for not knowing.”
“Okay… So just tell me what’s so bad about them?”
“Dude, just stop being stupid.”
Facebook showed me something yesterday from New Jersey (I don’t know why, I don’t live there) where people were asking about a ship anchored offshore (it turned out it was salvaging a shipwreck). But the conversation naturally turned to the windmill farms that are planned for the coast there, and one woman was claiming they kill whales, which may or may not be true, but it was the first I heard of anything like that. Then she said, “Do your research and get informed.” I clicked on her profile out of curiosity. Sure enough, it contained rantings about mask mandates and God.
Oh and this is the first result when I google “Windmill whales”. Amazing what happens when someone actually does research.
one woman was claiming they kill whales
Ah yes, the famous “flying whales” of New Jersey that leap out of the water and get decapitated by the windmill blades.
The whole “I’ve never had a serious illness, so my immune system is strong” is just stupid.
Yes it is. Plenty of viruses and bacteria don’t give a shit about your immune system. Never having a serious illness before won’t protect you from HIV if you are promiscuous and not smart about it.
Vaccines also faced a problem in that they are too good. I’m 48. I don’t remember any of my classmates getting measles or mumps. We did get chicken pox, though, because this was before the vaccine. My kids, meanwhile, haven’t gotten chicken pox because they got the vaccine.
Given that I haven’t experienced measles, mumps, whooping cough, etc first hand, it would be easy to dismiss their severity. “Measles are just some bumps on your body for a week. Whooping cough means you cough for a bit.” Completely untrue, but the Internet can spread these reduced severity descriptions far and wide.
If people experienced actual measles or whooping cough regularly, they would be racing to get the vaccines. By removing these diseases from everyday life, vaccines actually hurt themselves by making it easier for people to dismiss the diseases.
I don’t think this is a statistical issue.
When you boil down the rhetoric, what it comes down to is cognitive dissonance.
Anti-vaxers, and conservatives generally, have a negative physical reaction when they encounter a fact that goes contrary to their already established beliefs. Now to be fair, liberals do this too but not to the same extent.
There is a nugget of truth in their rhetoric which is that the government shouldn’t be trusted. On that basis, an entire lie and, quite frankly a political party, has established itself as “the government wants to track you with the vaccine!” while completely ignoring their cell phones.
Many of these people don’t want to know the truth because when presented with it, the truth will force them to either accept it or go back to what they know and, more importantly, feel.
This isn’t a battle over math.
It’s a battle over emotion and that’s why it’s so hard to win.
Yeah I was alluding to that. One would hope that death, permanent disability, and prolonged suffering would be stronger emotional motivators than minor heart problems, learning disabilities, and government overreach. But it appears that your preconceived notions can be so strong that you ignore the real possibile outcomes of your actions. I just wish so many people didn’t have to pay for their ignorance with their lives
I don’t think Math Illiteracy is the culprit in the case of well educated people, which I assume Maher is.
It is not hard to understand that vaccines have extremely low chance of serious side effects, while covid just has a low mortality chance, but a relatively high chance of long term effects. And these same vaccine deniers typically tout that covid is endemic now and “everyone is going to get it”, so we can just mark likelihood to get it as near 100%.
It’s not a hard concept. If you accept that you’re oing to get covid one way or another, your net chance of serious harm is much lower if you take the vaccine.
But to these asshats, it’s not about logic, it’s about ego. His phrasing was extremely demeaning, and offered zero evidence to his point of view. It was simply “if you don’t agree with me, you’re an idiot”. And that’s the argument I tend to get from the antivaxxers, and if pressed for actual stats, they will claim some conspiracy to hide the true numbers, and at best, quote all these irrelevant tangential stats that some misinformation article claims indicates the mainstream science willfully ignores in their agenda to promote dangerous vaccines.
Maher fought back, explaining he believes high-risk groups, such as the elderly and the obese should be vaccinated, but elite athletes such as tennis star Novak Djokovic and NFL quarterback Aaron Rodgers “didn’t need it.”
Uh, Bill you’re 67 years old. You are a part of the elderly. Now turn off Fox news, put down the remote and take a nap.
Nick Cordero was a Broadway performer and was in extremely good physical shape. Healthy, young, and fit. COVID still killed him. Being in good physical condition doesn’t inherently mean safety.
It’s remarkable to me how quickly we forgot the terror of the early days of COVID-19, before we had the vaccine and before we really knew what we were dealing with.
I heard a clip of it. If I remember correctly, he said 90 years old. So in his mind, he doesn’t need it because he’s not THAT old.
I love the way that the cut-off for “incompetent elderly” magically seems to go up every time these schmugs hit a new decade.
It’s genuinely time for these people to sit the fuck down and accept that they’re outdated and shouldn’t be leading anyone anymore. Just check into a home and relax for the rest of your life. I’m sure he can have his ego convinced that he’s “earned it”.
Needs one of those dementia villages so he can pretend hes still relevant
To play devils advocate: He isn’t entirely wrong. There are inherent risks with vaccines, and they can and do cause harm to a small percentage of people.
Now to stop talking crazy: The harm caused is extremely rare, and the percentage of affected people is quite small. These risks aren’t unknown or hidden, and they usually come from allergies or a compromised immune system’s.
Right.
This is basically the same as saying that wearing a seatbelt is a terrible idea, because in rare cases it causes terrible damage to the wearer.
Let’s just ignore the hundreds of thousands of people it helps and cherry pick cases that look bad. It’s not like we’re a people who rely on rational thought to progress.
Before I got any of my COVID vaccines, the nurse explained the risks, what to look for and gave me a pamphlet.
I’m not listening to Maher or MacFarlane about it because they don’t know what they are talking about.
MacFarlane seems to have read the brochure, at least. He wouldn’t be my go-to for health care advice, but he does appear to be reasonably well informed.
Its crazy to me as to how many people will use a “comedian” as one of their sources for healthcare information.
I mean if I wanted advice on how to be a shitty comedian then I would ask Maher for advice because he is a pro at that. But I ain’t taking his advice or even his opinion for my healthcare.
And most importantly, there’s a cost to getting the fucking thing the vaccine is for that outweighs the risks of the vaccine itself by an order of magnitude.
So yes, there’s 1 in a tens of thousands chance of serious adverse reactions. Which is a much smaller risk than the difference in adverse reactions to getting the disease when vaccinated vs unvaccinated.
Now to stop talking crazy: The harm caused is extremely rare, and the percentage of affected people is quite small.
True, and worth extending: for example, the cardiomyopathy (heart inflammation) known to affect some people (particularly, young men): if we’re evaluating the risks of taking a vaccine vs. not taking it, we also have to consider the risks of not taking the vaccine.
It turns out that incidence of cardiomyopathy in young men that didn’t receive the vaccine but were infected is higher than its incidence among young men that got the vaccine- and if anything, the immune reaction to the live virus (it causes the body to attack heart tissue) is stronger and more lethal than the reaction to the vaccine.
This means that the people arguing ‘but the vaccine has risks!’ as an argument against receiving it aren’t considering the risks associated with rejecting it. If you think about it, your odds of being exposed to the virus are basically 100% given enough time, and basically every adverse reaction to the vaccine will be milder than the same reaction to the live virus.
Yes- people are constantly worrying about the wrong things. Maybe they should be wary of lighting, because there are much greater chance of harm there than vaccine reaction (somewhere between 12-53 per million doses) and airline crashes (chance is .090 per million, or 1 in 11 million).
You are absolutely right.
The hardest part about this is that, there is truth, to what he is saying it just needs way, way more context.
Pretty much ANYTHING has risks, including vaccines.
Brushing your teeth HAS risks, but that doesn’t mean that going natural, not brushing is the way to go.
20 years ago Penn and Teller covered anti Vaxxers on an episode of Bullshit. They even provided an analogy for your comment by rolling bowling balls to represent the statistics.
They showed that there was either a really good chance of death, or a tiny chance of complications using the anti-vaxxers own information.
You can wear a seatbelt because most people will be in a car accident at some point in their lives or not wear a seatbelt because of the 0.0001% chance you end up in an accident where the seatbelt traps you and you die.
