Television host Bill Maher went after the medical establishment during his HBO show Friday night and ran through a long record of government officials being wrong about major health issues facing the country.
"When people ask me, 'Why are you so skeptical of what the medical establishment tells us?' I say, 'Because I've seen them react to a virus before,'" Maher said, citing the AIDs crisis in the 1980s. 'Instead of being precise and focusing on who should be protected, we launched a fear campaign about how AIDs was going to explode into the heterosexual community."
"The upshot of bad information was that in the late 1980s, low risk Americans were swamping testing facilities and diverting our attention and energy away from the truly at risk. New York in 2020 learned the hard way how much better precision would have been in protecting the nursing homes. Contrary to popular lore, COVID is not Russian roulette. Of course any virus, any thing, can kill anyone at anytime," Maher continued. "But we know who COVID kills. Seventy-five percent of COVID deaths are people 65 and older, 98-99 percent are unvaccinated, 78 percent who have died or hospitalized or overweight. If you're obese and unvaccinated or 85 and still crowd surfing at music festivals, yes, this will likely go badly for you. But at some point that has to stop being my responsibility. Doesn't it make more sense to focus on helping the vulnerable stay safe and let the rest of us go back to living normal lives."
Meanwhile, Democratic politicians are finally coming to their senses in some parts of the country.
Mandate no more: Gov. Phil Murphy (D-NJ) will no longer *require* students and school employees to wear masks in New Jersey schools. https://t.co/ntm3v5ztXv pic.twitter.com/xVdyppLQAE
— The Recount (@therecount) February 7, 2022