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.”
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.
I think the word you are looking for is apt or relevant, and not ironic.
That’s fair. I’ve probably never used it appropriately.
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.
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).
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.