Bill Maher Goes on Anti-Vax Tirade During Heated Covid-19 Debate With 'Family Guy' Creator Seth MacFarlane

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.
Exactly. His successes have fueled his ego into thinking all his opinions are important and correct. His failures are haters or people who "don’t get it."
Well, TIL. For some reason, despite not really knowing anything about him, I had the impression that he's a reasonable guy.
- That's been his whole shtick since the 90s. Ask "common sense" questions, elevate yourself into the Chad Wojack and everyone else is Soyjack, dunk on stupid religious people. Into the 2010s and 2020s, he went full culture war though.
I mean he's said it in the podcast in so many words: "why are the regular people more right than the experts sometimes?" I'm paraphrasing of course, I don't care to listen to it again but that's what kickstarted this conversation.
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.

"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."

"Do your own research" lol.
- 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.
Maher constantly berates his guests like this, you'd almost think it was a skit it's so bad.

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.
- Yup, my shrink's daughter in law was a marathon runner, mountain climber, etc. and now she can't even walk to the mailbox without having to stop for a breather.
  It's been over a year since she was infected with only very minor improvements.
  Fuck people like Bill.
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 schmucks 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".
- Now taking bets on how old he’ll say you should be once he turns 90

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.
- Which is extra ironic considering the parallels between anti-vax and early 1980s anti-seat belt protests.
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.
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.
- Wait wtf risks am I taking brushing my teeth!?
It's also literally true that you risk choking to death every time you eat, but I wouldn't advocate stopping.
It's kinda like saying, "More then 3 Jews were killed during the Holocaust."
Technically true, but still very disingenuous.
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.

The way I see it is this: sure there are millions of reasons to hate drug companies. To be distrustful of them. But if my doctors say that something is the best course of action, of course I will do that. My doctor said that Covid vaccines are abundantly safe, as are flu vaccines. My doctor is great. I have great trust in her opinion. Therefore, I will get my Covid and flu vaccines as often as I need to.

I don't know fuck all about the way these things work. But I do know I trust my doctor because she has been through all the education and has a decade plus of being a family health doctor. I trust her. And I think people should be more inclined to trust their doctors rather than random weirdos on the internet.

I don't know fuck all about the way these things work. But I do know I trust my doctor because she has been through all the education and has a decade plus of being a family health doctor.
Tbh this is the same reasoning that medical providers utilize for their own healthcare. I specialize in orthopedics and rehabilitation......
Yes I know more than the average Joe, but med school was a long time ago, and you aren't really proficient in a field you aren't actively practicing.
When I want to know if a vaccine is safe and medically necessary I look to my esteemed colleagues from the department of infectious disease. I don't really see how anyone with an MD behind their name can really attempt to fool themselves that they know more about a disease and how to treat it than the entirety of specialized departments.
If my buddies from infectious disease are taking a vaccine, I'm not going to second guess it. To me, it's the equivalent of seeing a bomb tech sprinting away from a ied, and then deciding that there's no rush because you've never seen a bomb go off before.
- I absolutely agree, and yet for years we've been seeing unmasked infectious disease experts at infectious disease conferences that (surprise surprise!) become super-spreader events.
  It would be funny if it weren't so distopian.
  (FWIW, I think most conferences for aerosol scientists have remained remote or respirator required)
But what about Dr. Chiropractor on Facebook that says that vaccines actually change your DNA?: "Through the RNA transcriptase of the aortic Golgi bodies?". He's a doctor. Those are big words. Plus, it involves me being victimized by a shadowy organization. It must be true!
- Chiropractors are not doctors. They're scam artists.
  Cracking your back might make you relax your muscles and as a result feel less pain for a short time but medically, it's of no more benefit than taking a hot bath.
- How the fuck do we still have quacks that are allowed to be called Dr. in this day and age? The Catholic fucking church is advocating for acceptance of gay marriage, is funding science, and is making other rational decisions, and our politicians and bureaucrats are like, "Well, let's preserve bone ~~pooping~~ popping and expensive water in our medical system!"
  Edit: a word
I agree, we should probably trust the doctors more than the crazies on Facebook or wherever they get their nonsense. But I think it's also dangerous to place blind faith in doctors, who themselves are susceptible to misinformation and advertising. Oxycontin adverts appeared in NEJM, doctors went "wow I should prescribe that", and that didn't go well.
I think trusting Science is most important. Read peer reviewed articles and read them critically.
- I feel like people gloss over clinical trials and how difficult it is to get from Drug Company has a drug to doctor prescribes it. Nothing is full proof, but the Process is quite involved, even the emergency use provision that was used during Covid.
What?! You mean you actually trust the professional in their profession to be professional? The nerve! Do you actually trust pilots and believe they even know how to fly a plane?!
- I used to think people who were skeptical of global warming would at least listen to the expert when it came to their health, but no. They'd let a politician operate on them out of belief.
Some of the issue in the US at least IMO is how the system turns patients into customers. People do have negative experiences with doctors for valid and invalid reasons, and if they can just pay for a "doctor" who does some BS pseudoscience, they see those credentials and they are getting much more "compassionate" care, they might even feel legitimately better after an experience like that. Doctors I think can become desensitized to patients sometimes or they just aren't good at social skills. Like you have a potentially life threatening tumor removed and ask your doctor why you got it, and they just say "meh you're just unlucky," which is absolutely true, but it's not at all sensitive to the patient's experience to be that blunt. Go in to the happy naturopath office and it's much different, "oh well lets look at your diet to assess your toxicity profile, we can come up with a plan and some steps etc etc." I totally see why people go for that.
I try not to blame people for their choices within this system because despite all the pseudoscience bs that they're paying for there's often perfectly rational reasons behind it, and I fully accept the placebo effect as legitimate. The placebo effect isn't just a trick that works on dumb people it's a very real physiological thing. If people are primed by an incredibly compassionate doctor who practices naturopathy or homeopathy, and despite the financial incentive they have maybe actually cares about the patients, they will actually feel better and it will actually benefit them. That's a huge complication for treating everyone who does this as simply stupid and misinformed, which they may be but that alone wouldn't explain a lot of this.
So blaming stupid patients I don't think helps and I believe the solution to healthcare and the mental health crisis (popular term for it) is ultimately political.
I would like to trust doctors more, however they often offer stuff like homeopathic treatments or over prescribe medications, where I am wondering if they are just payed to do so by the pharma industry.
IMO the financial incentives of doctors sort of run counter with offering the best treatment of patients, which then in turn destroys the trust in them.
Again capitalism ruins everything.
- Doctors being paid to push a particular medication seems to be a mostly American issue and should be legislated against.
  In most countries it's illegal for drug companies to incentivise doctors to push a particular medication. Same as how in my country it's illegal to advertise a prescription medication.
- where I am wondering if they are just payed to do so by the pharma industry.
  I believe the medical insurance companies, and what treatments they will approve/pay for, has a big factor in this.

The more mask off he goes the more I am shocked that even neolibs keep watching him.

It was during the pandemic that he started going off the rails. It was around that time that he started complaining about things being woke and I felt like this was coming. It was the initially smaller comments until I stopped watching as he kept focusing on how things were too woke and it just got super annoying. Not surprised. Others are saying this shit started earlier but I didn’t notice till like 2020/2021. Haven’t watched since then but guessing it’s gotten worse.
- with mounting evidence of serious neurological interaction between the virus and the host, it is not surprising at all that a certain percentage of the population might get a low-symptom infection that rewires their brains just enough to let the crazy out.
- It was after he was on Joe Rogan, he didn't like that Rogan had built his weird man cave in a hangar and he was stuck on TV
He had Jordan Peterson and Ted Cruz on at the same time. That's more than giving "fair time" to the right, that's just a vomitfest of hatred and ignorance.
- He used to willingly date Ann Coulter the epitome of vomitfest hatred and ignorance
The idea is to use the media to push those neolibs further right. Just a sheep dog doing sheep dog things.
Neolibertarianism has more in common with Neoconservatisim than liberalism at this point
I would be curious to see the Venn Diagram overlap of those that still watch him and those that watch/listen to Joe Rogan. I bet it's a circle.

Why do people still pay attention to this blowhard? He was a smarmy asshole even when I agreed with him. Now he's leaning into right wing culture war shit to try to remain relevant.

Yeah he's grasping at straws. People like him and Joe Rogan who chase views and plays at any cost are despicable and gross
I remember when I was first leaving religion and becoming an atheist, I saw a trailer for his Religulous "documentary." I think it looked interesting. I was young and angry at religion. So I watched it. I still felt like it was bad. It was basically just him going around the world laughing at religious people. He made it seem like he was going to have actual conversations on the subject. He wasn't. I'm surprised more people have been following him this whole time. Like you said, even when I agreed with him I didn't like him.
- It is titled a portmanteau of ridiculous and religious. You went in for a serious take?
I used to watch his show because it was live and guests seemed to have a little more freedom to say things than on other programs. I phased out of it around 2015 due to exhaustion of politics, but Maher has always been an asshole. I agree with him on Religion for the most part, but he's mean about it a lot. His Anti-vax views are stupid because he's worried about a small chance of a side effect and not a large chance of the main effect of getting the illness the vaccine stops.
- he’s worried about a small chance of a side effect and not a large chance of the main effect of getting the illness the vaccine stops.
  Poor risk assessment.

Fuck him. He’s sucked for a long time.

Seth MacFarlane is not an animator. He hasn't animated anything since the 1990s. He's a voice actor and producer.

And an actor. He's the main star in the Orville, which he writes and produces.
- He also produced the reboot of Cosmos with NDT.
- And a writer. He’s a writer for Orville, which he acts in and produces.
- RIP. I LOVE the Orville.

Is he so fucking stupid that he thinks the NVICP was set up for COVID?

The NVICP was established as part of the 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act (Public Health Service Act, 1987; 100 Stat. 3756, codified as Title XXI of the Public Health Service Act at 42 USC 300aa-1 et seq. (Supp. V 1987)), but it did not become operational until the fall of 1988.

I bet I can count on two hands the number of COVID vaccine "injuries" that have been paid out from this fund.

Bill Maher is a moron, I don't understand how he is still on the air.

EDIT: Correction, the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program (CICP) was actually started in May 2023.

EDIT2: I found the relevant data for this:

CICP data for COVID-19 claims (as of December 1, 2023)

Total COVID-19 CICP claims filed: 12,700

    
Pending Review or In Review: 10,863
Decisions: 1,837
    Claims found eligible for compensation: 38
        Claims compensated: 10
        Claims pending benefits determination: 27
        Claims with no eligible reported expenses: 1
    Denied: 1,799
        Requested medical records not submitted: 337
        Standard of proof not met and/or covered injury not sustained: 257
        Missed filing deadline: 954
        Not CICP covered product/not specified: 251

This is an incredibly small percentage of the vaccinated population.

Oh, these are very interesting numbers.
Total COVID-19 CICP claims filed: 12,700
Out of about 700M doses administered? That's 0.0018% of people who actually thought they had been harmed enough to actually file a complaint.
Decisions: 1,837
Claims found eligible for compensation: 38
And 2% of the people who thought they had something actually did.
That means that, of the 700 million doses of COVID vaccine that have been administered since 2020, 0.0000054% have resulted in an adverse reaction significant enough to merit financial compensation.
Thank you, Bill, for providing the information needed to prove your own point spurious.
Bill Maher is a moron, I don't understand how he is still on the air.
There is a huge audience for reactionary bullshit. I'm embarrassed to admit that it took me too long to realize that's what he sells, but when half of every show was whining about trans people it got super obvious.
- That's where I tuned out too. His outrage that a trans woman might be a better swimmer than a biological woman is way down the list of things I care about. Why does he get so worked up?
This wasn't on his shitty HBO show, this was on his shitty podcast.
From your edit:
Missed filing deadline: 954
Apparently the vaccine seriously injured them, but not enough to actually bother filing a claim on time. Quite the injury.
- "I got better."
an actual decent take, backed up with actual information. upvote the parent, people!

Anti-vax is just another word for helplessly stupid

Maher isn't funny at all, despite having a "comedy" show.

I've never found him particularly funny, but more importantly, and I say this as someone who did standup for a few years, he berates his audience when they don't laugh at his jokes. I used to watch his show, and he told his audience, "fuck you," when they didn't laugh numerous times. That is something you absolutely do not do in comedy. Even insult comics don't insult the audience for not laughing at their jokes.
- If he was a jobbing stand up I'd totally agree but he's got his audience who presumably are ok with him berating them every time an undercooked joke bombs.
- There are ways to insult an audience - Jeselnik does this well. Maher used to operate more in this fashion in the early-mid 00s. He really fell off during/after Obama though
- There are ways to insult an audience - Jeselnik does this well. Maher used to operate more in this fashion in the early-mid 00s. He really fell off during/after Obama though
His role is an establishment lap dog for two minutes hate

It’s unfortunate that some woman took a shit decades back and now we’re all still having to listen to the wet farts after.

The pair discussed the effectiveness of the vaccine, with the actor backing up the drug, while the Real Time host slammed the medical establishment in the U.S. for not promoting natural immunity.

“I would think this country did not allow for natural immunity to be considered. And I know this is a subject dear to your heart. Like, even if you had the disease, you still had to get a vaccine. That’s powerful stupid. They don’t do that in Europe,” Maher began.

MacFarlane fought back noting natural immunity had been debunked, as people repeatedly got the virus.

for not promoting natural immunity
You mean letting everyone get it and let the weak die, so only the strong survive?
- Well, Bill would be out...

Okaaaay new rule. Maher is a great example for how politics has changed in the US the last 20 years, because he definitely hasn't changed (okay maybe in some ways), yet he's almost universally despised by progressives now.

Other comedians are going after him now too, Heidecker and Armisen produced a whole half hour satire of the odd chemistry he has on his "Club Random" podcast. Tim doesn't do the voice impression but it's almost funnier for some reason because of that. This is an absolutely hilarious example of it. "Hey you want some dope?" "Oh yeah sure... lets smoke this joint" "It's not weed stupid it's a CLOVE CIGARETTE." I dunno how Jeff Ross holds it together here, the roastmaster that he is.

Norm was one of the first to really go after him as "one of these comedians who try and be smart instead of funny." His appearances on Maher's show in that video are great, totally ruins what Maher is trying to do and makes the audience and guests crack up.

The Jeff Ross episode, holy cow that’s bad. I’ve never seen his personal shows. He’s like the world’s strangest narcissist.
- Yeah I dunno how he can look at this and think it's good to release it. He's basically rich and set for life at this point so maybe it's a "because I can" thing.
  Jeff saying he doesn't own a gun and Maher just berating him and telling him what the only reasonable opinion is comes off as completely insane.
Having watched him decades ago and really liking him I can say he most definitely changed. He leans far more conservative and does not ride the fence like he used to. Granted times have changed and his schtick has gotten old. Playing a good devil's advocate can be entertaining even if I personally am over it.
- Yeah he always had the antivax views, but the "I believe in science" crowd was content to brush it off because he was big with the New Atheism thing, and it didn't have the significance at the time. He was also a cannabis advocate, in favor of gay marriage, and had many other liberal libertarian opinions that were popular at the time from the Democrat base. I remember seeing his book on the shelf of my educated well-read lesbian friend in late 00s, and I don't know why I remember this because it wasn't remarkable at all, maybe because it was my first exposure to a friend's political opinions rather than it being Maher specifically.
Damn, Jeff is like "please get me out of here..."
- You can see Jeff's enthusiasm melting in his face with every response from Maher. I didn't know he had this level of personal restraint before because I only know him from his roasts. It was soul crushing to see him like this lol

The US media allows charlatans and grifters to rise to the top. Worse, their nonsense gets translated into Arabic and spread by our idiots.

Good thing I live in a country with mandatory vaccination.

I feel that. Recently YouTube has been recommending me videos from the "manosphere" and tons of Arabic and Cyrilic commentators talking pretty harshly about women. Feels like slipping backwards in time.
The cultural divides are getting a little thinner online these days.
the uk media allows that too and it sucks
I would hardly say Bill Maher is at the top of society. He may have a lot of money but he doesn't much more say on how the country is run than any other American. He doesn't have lobbying money. Also anyone getting mopped the floor with by Family Guy funny man isn't exactly someone people look to for political views and discussion.

I got vaccine for Bill Maher and haven't cared about this obsolete Friday night filler for 3 years.

he’s a douchebag for money. he is vaxxed himself.

i went ahead and listened to that "antivax rant" and really it wasn't against the vaccine at all, he was against the censorship of discussion about it and policies around it.
such as, the lab leak hypothesis... once completely censored as "misinformation", but now a viable theory.
or how previous covid infections don't count as a vaccination, although the immunity ends up the same.
a lot of his ideas on it are wrong, or misinformed, but the fact that we weren't allowed to talk about it was fucked up... and i think it was a lot of the reason antivax shit got so big... being completely censored by bots on every forum makes a lot of people paranoid.
i do also remember being shouted down in every forum by a mob of anti-vax russian sock puppets, so it wasn't for no reason... but still, being able talk about things is crucial for a democracy to function.
- such as, the lab leak hypothesis... once completely censored as "misinformation", but now a viable theory
  It was never completely censored. Evidenced by the fact that you, me, and everyone else heard about it.
  People got called names for promoting it without good evidence. People also got called names for pointing out that the evidence was super weak. Y'know, what passes for "debate" these days.
  Stop lying
- Much like this post's OP, couldn't find any better sources? How about the actual interview in YouTube? Google the names of the two guys, that's all it takes. But no, let's all just rant about how bad anti vax people are, rather than argue whatever points they make. This is such an extreme echo chamber.
  For me, it was most revealing when the EU parliament got the pharmaceutical execs to admit they did not track basic stats of the vaccine. Does it prevent infection completely? If not, does it stop retransmission? Does it minimize the severity (no reaction, slight cold, hospitalized, death)? Nope, we're not tracking that.
- being able talk about things is crucial for a democracy to function.
  This is a thing that really bothers me these days, has me worried.
  There's such an emphasis on "killing the messenger" (vs the message) and shutting down discussion, that we haven't seen in previous ages.
  I don't know why it's a new thing, maybe it's just astroturfers/bots, otherwise it's the newer generation being okay with censoring others, and that's a bad thing (censoring others).

I would not want to debate Seth. He’s very intelligent and very quick witted.

Plus he has a lovely voice!
- Several, in fact!

Bill who?

Exactly. This guy hasn't been relevant for years.
- He's relevant only in the sense that he is part of the anti-intellectualism and reactionary grift that's purposely misinforming people.
He's a politically center-right "comedian" that hosts a show where he pretends that tolerating gay people and liking weed puts him on the "left" and then he goes on rant after rant about how much he hates millennials and "wokeness."
He's a slightly more intelligent Joe Rogan.
- Don't forget that he's the smuggest person to ever draw air.

I grew up when polio was a scourge. A relative was an anti-vaxxer, and one of her children was not given the Salk vaccine. Her child lived his life in braces, and over his lifetime, literally had millions of dollars spent on trying to minimize the damage from that one ignorant choice. Their family was bankrupted, and the entire family lived in poverty from that point on, spending every penny that they could, trying to undo the damage. There is a true cost of not getting vaccinated, but double-blind meta study has not shown any cost tied to getting vaccinated for covid, for the general population.

Check for yourself.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36936964/

I'm only 46, so post-polio vaccine, but my mother's boss had polio as a kid and wore leg braces and walked with two canes. Just heartbreaking. And all the people who suffer from long COVID when they could have gotten vaccinated may not even have learned their lesson.
- I’m 38, but I have a much older friend who had polio as a child. I didn’t know that until a few years ago. He walks with a limp, but it never crossed my mind to ask why.
  A few years ago he and I were talking about body identification for whatever reason. He said, “it wouldn’t be hard to identify my body because of this.” He lifted his pants, and I said, “oh I didn’t know you had a wooden leg.”
  It wasn’t wooden. It was just skin over a bone. No muscle.
  That’s when he told me he survived polio as a child.
  Funny thing though, he’s anti vax when it comes to Covid and has been hospitalized because of it at least once, maybe twice. 🙃

Someone please name a funny Bill Maher joke

His career.
Bill Maher.
I'll be honest, I had no idea he was supposed to considered a comedian. I've only known him as an HBO political talk show host.

Is there something in the water? What the fuck is with this spread nonsense? How the shit did preventative medicine become a target for these people? Will they find toothpaste shouldn't be consumed en masse and rail against that?

Bunch of people, mostly old dudes, have a fundamental aversion to not being the smartest person in the room. They latch on to whatever gives them the opportunity to be contrarian and in an environment of social media and disinformation they don't fully understand they spiral out into neofash, deluded stances becoming their entire persona.
Rant about something you're wrong about, get the whole internet telling you how dumb that is, get defensive because you can't be the one who's wrong, get radicalized. Welcome to the 21st century.
Source: I can't believe I didn't spiral down that toilet myself. Seriously, I should be one of those assholes. I can't believe I noticed just in time before the Internet weaponized that personality type into the death of democracy.
- Bunch of people, mostly old dudes, have a fundamental aversion to not being the smartest person in the room.
  Talk about hitting the nail on the head. And where does this come from? We all know that guy. He's our dad, or whoever - but we all know at least one. So it's nearly ubiquitous. What I wonder is: what is this a product of? From where does this arise?
Just wait till you hear about the conspiracy theories surrounding fluoride.. :/
- Fluoride has modest benefit in terms of reduction of dental caries but significant costs in relation to cognitive impairment, hypothyroidism, dental and skeletal fluorosis, enzyme and electrolyte derangement, and uterine cancer. Given that most of the toxic effects of fluoride are due to ingestion, whereas its predominant beneficial effect is obtained via topical application, ingestion or inhalation of fluoride predominantly in any form constitutes an unacceptable risk with virtually no proven benefit. Source: NIH.gov
Big pharma doesn't have clean hands, millions of people died and no one says shit but we're still crying about a few hundred businessmen dying in 9/11, the same kind everyone goes EAT THE RICH about. Everyone is so psychotic in their everyday life and this is the least baffling thing if you've ever read a history book or a newspaper

“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.

Lots of Italians agreeing with Maher's rhetoric: Italian hospitals collapse: Over 1,100 patients waiting to be admitted in Rome

' "Covid has slightly decreased in the last week, flu is spreading, but other viruses have also caused 'overcrowding' in hospitals and a very strong pressure on emergency services," De Laco explained on Tuesday, according to local media.'

COVID, Flu, and RSV all have vaccines available to the public.

They should bump the unvaccinated in favor of treating vaccinated people who need help. "Oh you decided to start trusting medical science now? Tough shit".
Self solving problems are the best problems.
- The problem is that there's people who have been vaccinated who aren't getting care because of the influx of idiots
- That's a strategy that's used in IT all the time.
- Vaccines are great for young people with strong immune systems. They are significantly less effective for the elderly and newborns and the immuno-compromised.
  So if you get a nice thick herd immunity of healthy people surrounding the immune-weak, you can avoid sudden rampant disease spread into - say - retirement homes or daycares, which spike the incidence of illness for everyone. Also, keeping rates of spread low reduces the incidence of mutation and the chance for a given virus to evade the current vaccination protocol.
  This isn't an individualist problem. Either we all immune together or we all get variants separately.

Vaccine court

There's a specific court just for vaccines? Is that by regular court and family court?

They're allowed to use the Night Court set during the day
- What is this streaming on again?
In the USA, congress has set aside a fund for people with vaccine injuries. Idk about a court, I thought you just had to apply for the money or something
Edit: it’s sort of like a court case:
https://www.hrsa.gov/vaccine-compensation

They can’t write it on their back on the vaccine. So you have to dig them.

wat

i dO mY oWn ResEarcH!
- Thanks for copying and pasting a meme, you're really contributing to the culture war. I hope you get promoted to private first class.
Yeah, because medicines that are administered by doctors obviously always have OTC consumer labeling. /s
Had a stroke mid-sentence.
- Obviously he was just vaccinated mid sentence. /s
Typo. I think he's saying the companies don't post the risks on the bottle like they're supposed to do you have to grill them in front of Congress.
Of course that's false. But these ppl never let facts stop the narrative.
- I think he means more that people have to seek out the package inserts and read through those behemoths to find that information. In that respect, he’s not wrong. You either have to read the physical thing if you have one or go online and search for a pdf or something to read it.
  However, people don’t give themselves vaccines. That’s a doctor or pharmacist’s job. So, yeah, you won’t read it on the back of the vial because you never get the vial.
"Can you dig it???"
Cyrus
Bill Maher

This just in:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/vaccination-dramatically-lowers-long-covid-risk/

Scientific American is a pop science publication and shouldn't be used for citation

What a fucking moron, Maher has been a piece of shit for quite some time now

My partner and I were on a road trip over the holidays & looking for something to listen to.

He saw Seth’s podcast with Maher & asked if I wanted to listen (we’re both fans of Seth).

I said fuck no.

Glad I didn’t waste my time with that bullshit.

wish people would stop giving time and space to bill maher because he's always been an asshole since the 90s but at least it gives me another reason to post roddy piper verbally destroying him.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIpsFgZ3gAc

Bill Maher once again proving that he's a piece of shit.

Imagine going on Seth McFarlane's pocast and having people come out of it going "whoa, that guest was a dick".

That's dedication to your being a dick craft.

The theater folks I used to know back 15+ years ago were pretty vocal about the fact that Maher is pretty nasty to work for and that he's a giant asshole. I don't know if that's common knowledge or common experience, but seeing these folks' passionate distaste for him left an impression on me.
- You don't need to hear behind-the-scenes talk. Just watch his show. He's undeniably an asshole. He's not doing a bit or a character because he's the same when being interviewed.
Are you saying Seth is a dick? If so, is there anything I can read about?
- A dick? No idea. Don't know the man.
  A dickish vibe, public persona and general cultural presence? I mean, enough that I made that joke, I suppose.

Wasn't this guy normal at some point?

Yeah, like 20 years ago. He's gotten so horrible over the decades.
- Boomer lead poisoning strikes again.
  I sincerely hope Maher is unvaccinated & gets Long COVID.
- It's sad that corporations have effectively commodified the mental decline of Society's elders and packaged it as "entertainment."
I think he's always been a populist mouthpiece. It's just that during the Clinton era what populism even looked like was very different.
- Yeah he's always been a dick, people just liked him when he was on their side.

Hey lois, remember the time I debated an antivaxer

Yeah... It's bullshit

Fuuuck I read Hader for a second and my heart stopped.

Hader just believes in more for him and less for anyone else, nothing to worry about

Huh..,That must mean that HBO will pay you even if you are sick and can't produce a show. That's nice, though I'm not sure all companies are like that...

Isn't that just sick time? I would hope any HBO employee would get sick time. The same at other networks. I would expect Colbert (and hopefully his crew if the union has worked that into the contract) got paid when he was off the air because his appendix ruptured.
- Sick t8me? These guys have million dollar contracts to deliver a given number of shows. That's it. If they get get sick, they have to pay others to replace them. Unless you are like Johnny Carson, who had people who would do it for free.
Do you think he has to clock in everyday? LOL

This isn’t politics

um, yes it is.
- One comic and one media mouth shooting the shit is not politics

NPC behavior: everyone in line to get the vaccine

Genocidal behavior: dehumanizing others by considering them artificial and giving them a name to fit that consideration.
- Npc Lives Matter Activist:
  Bill Gates will develop another vax for us all 😍. So we can all line up to take it, and say thank you. We will also be brainwash into spreading the word that it is inconspicuous that there are people who do not align like us to take vax 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️

Npc Lives Matter Activist: