In related news, that unfathomably successful smug modern medicine denier (who nonetheless was awarded a prize by Richard Dawkins), has had to cancel an episode of his horrible little show because…he tested positive for COVID-19!
Well, gosh, I guess I am forced by the evidence to admit that the pandemic does have a few positive outcomes.
They should cancel the whole damn show. The only thing worse than Bill Maher are his fans.
I’m just surprised given his anti-vax views that he was vaccinated at all.
Hee hee… The high-profile anti-vaxxer got caught with his pants down… And the needle in his ass.
(Yeah I know that the Covid jab goes into your shoulder, but this is funnier)
I hope the likes of Noah, Colbert and Oliver are going to shame-walk him to the exit. Come on, a welcoming open door.
The aforementioned Noah, Colbert and Oliver have been my preferred sources of US news the last four horrible years, they make it possible to absorb otherwise unendurable news items.
Likewise, Brit satire shows make it possible to keep up with events in the dumpster fire previously known as ‘Britain’.
I’ve entirely avoided Bill Maher’s shows — partly because of this & other blog’s entries / comments, and also his Encyclopædia of America Loons (September 2011) entry — so this is very much a guess as I have no exposure to his “style” / : Presuming he survives (likely), he’ll claim it is . And possibly other nonsense, such as he got sick because his own vaccination was the virus (which is bonkers, vaccine shedding only happens for live vaccines, which none of the Covid-19 / Sars-CoV-2 vaccines are!). That assumes, of course, he acknowledges he did have Covid-19. And that the claim he’s been (fully) vaccinated is true.
Obviously the vaccine is not 100% effective but is it wrong to wonder if Maher is lying about his vaccination status? Given his anti-vax tendencies and his general obnoxiousness it seems plausible.
If he’s actually been vaccinated, it makes it likely that an “anti-vaxx” stance on the show is just to pull in the rubes, not his own, actual, beliefs.
(On a cheerier note… All 4 adults in the household have had both shots, and the 13-year-old grandson is scheduled for his first shot in about 2 weeks, with the second shot scheduled around Mid-June, so everyone will be as immunized as one gets by early July.)
@7, Or (presumably in-addition-to the claimed “weekly … testing”), vaccination is a requirement of his employers (or their insurers).
Much more upsetting, my local baker had a Covid case. No bread til the 20th!
@4 The bbc has cancelled The Mash Report ,so that’s one less piss taking site .
John Crace who writes in the guardian is always worth a read.
I do love how Dawkins giving that award exposes so clearly that it was never about critical thinking or science or anything else, just anti-religious fervor.
I suspect he hadn’t been vaccinated. There’s no way to find out, unfortunately.
In many ways, he’s a Republican. In all ways, an asshole.
@5 blf
I was unfortunate enough to have his show within earshot recently. If you’re curious, he was rambling about (in no particular order): how Democrats are bad at estimating risk; how ignoring expert advice about COVID-19 is less risky than being obese; how young’uns are easily bamboozled by con men and how people his age have wisdom; how cryptocurrencies are worthless and the USD is not; and, of course, his go-to whine about how cancel culture is oppressing him and how he is not allowed to say any of these things, despite having a platform on HBO where he is allowed to say anything he wants.
Maybe he’s got a point about that last part, though. After all, his show is cancelled today…
beholder@13
One is a mass delusion. The other is a mass delusion backed by a standing army. So yeah, I would say USD has an advantage here.
Well, for a supposed critical thinker it’s pretty disappointing to see his HBO official announcement make a massively incorrect statement. While the vaccine increases his chance of being asymptomatic, there are plenty of unvaccinated, asymptomatic cases as well, so he can’t state that he is asymptomatic because of the vaccine. (Although Maher probably didn’t write the announcement, I assume he approved the wording.)
Based on beholder@13, though, he’s no good at assessing risk at all. “… COVID-19 is less risky than being obese.” Well this indicates that he has no idea about the time component of risk assessment. If you have obesity in the US, your attributable risk of death is about 5-27% depending on demographic…over your entire lifetime. If you catch COVID19 in the US, your risk of death is around 2%…over the next few weeks. And it’s not like public health physicians haven’t also been working to reduce the disease burden from obesity for the last three decades.
What Maher is doing here is not risk assessment, it’s comparing COVID to another condition that is high-risk but does not arouse popular panic, and then adding a layer of miscomparison by using the wrong time denominator. It’s classic FUD that would make Hill and Knowlton proud.
I’m not a fan of his BS but I’m glad he got his vaccination and it put him in a category where testing positive doesn’t make him ill or die. I hope he appreciates that the vaccine may have saved his biscuits. Yeah he’s an obnoxious prick but I don’t wish badness upon him.
@4birgerjohansson and @10davidrc1. The Mash Report has been cancelled because the new boss at the BBC is a Tory Party apparatchik. The BBC is looking for right-wing comedians … but strangely enough has found very few.
John Crace is a wonderful sketch writer, but I think his colleague Marina Hyde is sharper, and one of the finest English satirists. FYI, Ms Hyde and Mr Crace are giving an online talk on the art of political humour on June 8th as part of the Guardian’s 200th birthday celebrations.