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.
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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.
What amusing is that he frequently accuses both the left and the right of existing in their own little bubbles. Self awareness isn't his strong suit.
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."
"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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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 got vaccine for Bill Maher and haven't cared about this obsolete Friday night filler for 3 years.
I would not want to debate Seth. He’s very intelligent and very quick witted.
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.
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.
Vaccine court
There's a specific court just for vaccines? Is that by regular court and family court?
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: