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.

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.

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.

"Do your own research" lol.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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?!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

And an actor. He's the main star in the Orville, which he writes and produces.

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.

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.

This wasn't on his shitty HBO show, this was on his shitty podcast.

an actual decent take, backed up with actual information. upvote the parent, people!

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.

His role is an establishment lap dog for two minutes hate

for not promoting natural immunity

You mean letting everyone get it and let the weak die, so only the strong survive?

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.

The Jeff Ross episode, holy cow that’s bad. I’ve never seen his personal shows. He’s like the world’s strangest narcissist.

Damn, Jeff is like "please get me out of here..."

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 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.

Plus he has a lovely voice!

Exactly. This guy hasn't been relevant for years.

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.

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.

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.

Just wait till you hear about the conspiracy theories surrounding fluoride.. :/

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

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.

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.

They're allowed to use the Night Court set during the day

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

i dO mY oWn ResEarcH!

Had a stroke mid-sentence.

Yeah, because medicines that are administered by doctors obviously always have OTC consumer labeling. /s

"Can you dig it???"
- Cyrus

- Bill Maher

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.

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

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.

Are you saying Seth is a dick? If so, is there anything I can read about?

Yeah, like 20 years ago. He's gotten so horrible over the decades.

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.

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

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.

Do you think he has to clock in everyday? LOL

um, yes it is.

Genocidal behavior: dehumanizing others by considering them artificial and giving them a name to fit that consideration.