Bill Maher Schools Biologist Richard Dawkins on COVID Basics
‘Club Random’ host shows signs of breaking free from corrupt press bubble
Bill Maher isn’t a doctor, nor does he play one on TV.
He’s just a political satirist who, based on recent clues, is starting to read news reports outside the corrupt mainstream media bubble.
Days ago, the host of “Real Time with Bill Maher” praised old-school journalist Bari Weiss for debuting The Free Press, a news outlet dedicated to fair reportage.
This week, Maher invited famed biologist Richard Dawkins on his “Club Random” podcast. Their friendly, wide-ranging discussion touched on science and, more specifically, the COVID-19 pandemic.
The podcaster seemed far more up to speed on basic pandemic truths than the biologist. At times, it wasn’t even close.
Maher kicked off the pandemic portion of the chat by calling himself a “medical skeptic” with a caveat.
“I just question everything,” the comedian said. “I’m not an anti-vaxxer. I believe vaccines are a medical intervention like every other drug which has some drawbacks, benefits. I don’t believe that everybody has the same health profile so every medical intervention just like any other drug isn’t appropriate for everybody.”
That sane approach might have gotten him banned on Twitter just months ago. It still could get him in trouble on platforms like YouTube or Facebook, sites that haven’t been given a transparency upgrade a la Elon Musk’s Twitter.
That line of thinking suggests Maher is perusing sites beyond CNN.com and The Washington Post, which mostly regurgitate CDC information.
Dawkins countered that vaccinations are often about more than just individual recipients. They benefit society as a whole in countering the spread of an illness.
“That’s not right with COVID because we found out the vaccine does not prevent transmission or getting it. That argument is, at best, out of date,” said Maher.
“Well, it’s certainly right for measles, mumps and rubella,” said Dawkins, changing the subject.
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“I’m not an anti-measles vaccine crusader,” Maher said, steering the conversation back on topic. “The issue now is COVID, and that is an outdated argument. [The vaccination] is only for you.”
Maher then brought up how “16,000 doctors and scientists” signed the Great Barrington Declaration in 2020 disputing the government-imposed lockdowns to fight the pandemic.
“Did you hear about this?” Maher asked.
“No,” Dawkins admitted.
“As infectious disease epidemiologists and public health scientists we have grace concerns about the damaging physical and mental health impacts of prevailing COVID 19 policies,” the GBD reads.
The Great Barrington Declaration addressed policies now seen by many as a failure on many levels, from mental health woes to economic disparities. Meanwhile, Sweden’s lockdown-free approach led to among the best results.
We just learned through the Twitter Files investigation that Twitter “intentionally blacklisted, censored, suppressed, and targeted the GBD and its signers” to support Dr. Anthony Fauci’s lockdown recommendations.
Thanks to Musk releasing the #TwitterFiles to Weiss and Taibbi, we have more insight into Twitter’s internal censorship policies. Until the NIH releases more information, the Twitter Files raise more questions than answers.@PhilWMagness @davidmwaugh01https://t.co/rOzyQLszjT
— Independent Institute (@IndependentInst) December 13, 2022
That helps explain why Dawkins hadn’t heard of it, despite his intellectual prowess. And, thanks to Twitter censorship, he’s not alone.
Maher explained that experts who didn’t toe the CDC line to the letter faced punishment over the past two-plus years, be it from Big Tech censors or Dr. Fauci.
We later learned Dr. Fauci allegedly used his power and influence to snuff out the Declaration.
“Now look, the vaccine obviously saved a lot of lives but they were wrong about the transmission,” Maher said.
Dawkins essentially ignored him.
“I don’t know about the 16,000 doctors. I just know that the COVID pandemic has been a triumph of science in the speed with which these vaccines were developed, and it’s a beautiful story.” Dawkins said.
“Agreed, but only a part of the story,” Maher said.
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Dawkins said the vaccine replicates what the body’s immunity systems create but “in a harmless way.”
Again, Maher wasn’t having it.
“At best yes, that’s how it’s supposed to work… but as we know, every medical intervention, including vaccines, you can read the literature for all of them, will say they have side effects, so it’s not exactly mimicking what your body does,” Maher said. “It should be anyone’s personal right to say, ‘You know what I know has always worked for me? My immune system.’”
Other nations have banned the COVID-19 vaccines because they are too dangerous for children.
Why does the mainstream media not talk about this?
Dr. Ranata Moon: “We are being asked to inject this product into our nation’s kids who have essentially a 0% risk of harm.” pic.twitter.com/OVA2XKG3TM
— Senator Ron Johnson (@SenRonJohnson) December 9, 2022
Maher added Americans have a right to determine their own health plans based on their needs, citing how most COVID-19 deaths were among the elderly and obese.
Later, Dawkins argued on behalf of the now dubious hope of herd immunity. Once again, Maher shot him down.
“The idea that provided enough people get vaccinated, then the epidemic has nowhere to go,” Dawkins said.
“But it didn’t work that way,” Maher said. Countries around the world learned that lesson the hard way, inoculating large swathes of the population without eradicating the virus.
Maher noted that he got COVID-19 a month after getting his vaccine. He added CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky contracted the virus after multiple boosters.
NEW: CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky has tested positive for COVID-19, the CDC says. https://t.co/eJxOS3Gp3n
— ABC News (@ABC) October 22, 2022
Dawkins dismissed both examples as mere anecdotes, even though we’ve heard many similar stories.
“It’s an anecdote that is very typical,” Maher said.
Later, Maher mentioned a Boston lab experiment that created an even more powerful, and potentially deadly, version of the virus. Once again, it caught Dawkins napping.
“It’s this, you know, gain of function. Is that what they call it where they think that’s maybe how COVID started in the lab in Wuhan to begin with where this was this gain of function,” Maher said.
“I haven’t heard that phrase,” Dawkins said.
“Gain of function” has been an alarming part of the pandemic narrative. Some say that strain of research led to the original COVID-19 virus which killed millions across the globe. Fauci critics suggest he helped fund that research.
Dawkins knows exactly what gain of function is. He’s an evolutionary biologist. Good grief. Nature is a gigantic gain and loss of function laboratory. 24/7. Nonstop. Trillions of gain and loss of function experiments.
Dawkins has never heard the term “gain of function?”
I am convinced now more than ever that this renowned atheist has actually never read the Bible.
The article above suggests the eminent Richard Dawkins was – a) well out of his lane; b) has lost a step or five; c) hasn’t kept up to speed on anything regarding COVID; d) famed biologist Richard Dawkins is overrated. It’s clear Mr. Dawkins doesn’t know any more about COVID than what he has heard from Birx, Fauci, the CDC, and the NIH – all of whom/which have been discredited many times over. Maher did well, but probably should have interviewed someone who knows something about the subject.
Saddest conversation I’ve every witnessed.
Dawkins is not that ignorant. He’s being willfully ignorant because the lie must be continued at all costs. Pfizer is projecting 15 billion a year in perpetuity from the clot shot. You don’t think they’re going to let the truth stand in their way, do you?
Great
I am sitting here absolutely dumbfounded by the fact that Dawkins had never heard the phrase “Gain of function”. How many more clueless intellectuals (willfully or otherwise) are we relying upon for social and economic policy? This is BEYOND frightful.
Agree. “Expert” is an overused term.
Richard Dawkins can be seen in vids contradicting himself proving he doesn’t believe the selfish gene theory he peddles
I watched the entire interview, and the conversation was more nuanced then this represents. Also, Dawkins was clearly very tired and somewhat detached from the conversation. On any other day he would have taken Maher to school — and I say that as someone who likes Maher a lot.
Heh. That reminds me of an acquaintance who, upon being told how bad things were under biden, retorted, “It would be the same under Trump!”
Ah, the ol’ Crystal Ball Retort! “Well, it would have been like THAT…. if if had been like THIS….! I just KNOW it!”
It seems the shots were mainly good for one thing: Keeping old, infirm, and people with certain health problems from keeling over. The healthy majority didnt need it, especially children. It appears it has adverse affects on healthy athletes – possibly. Not enough data or honest coverage on that yet.
The coverage part I agree with. The data is there.
Bill seems to dismiss all the people that died because they were old or obese, so their own fault I guess. Plenty of healthy individuals and children died as well. If the recommendations from CDC would have been followed by everyone in the beginning, there would only been a fraction of the deaths that we ended up with. You don’t have a right to infect me or my family because you think you can do whatever the hell you want in our society. The government is charged with keeping every citizen as safe as possible. I am a nurse and you have no idea what a horrible death this was, not just for the patient but their families being unable to even be at their side. For schools that stayed open, look at how many teachers died. Look at the number of nurses and doctors that died along with first responders. There is still no vaccine for HIV after all these years. So it was amazing how quickly they were developed and the recommendations were effective at preventing or slowing the spread. So here is the problem with Dr. Bill Maher, whom I have always been a big fan of, then next virus could very well be more deadly for whomever but thanks to all this Covid misinformation we will be less likely to follow any direction from the agencies tasked with fighting it. We already have scores of toddlers un-vaccinated with the usual childhood vaccines because of this mess.
We need a national data base for medical health “professionals” like you, so we can avoid your robotic behavior and ill choices.
The reason they were so quick with the vaccine is that there was enough research in place from the Fauci backed Gain of Function, that developed the virus I n the first one place.
The “vaccine” doesn’t prevent transmission. How do you not know this? Must be reading the same government propaganda as Dawkins.
Excuse me. Where have you been. Everyone can transmit Covid, even the vaccinated. So I guess you should separate your family into different homes because they are all capable of giving you Covid. BTW, don’t think Bill was blaming old/obese people. It is just a statement of fact. The virus officially started in March of 2020, vaccine wasn’t even available until late 2020, early 2021 and took time to inoculate all those that wanted it or were forced to get it. 1M people died in that time, mostly elderly & obese. 4 of our grandkids wee back in school, with masks/social distanced by Sept 2020. NO teachers/administrators/kids died during that time. You need to do some research. Sounds like you are still in a panic and scared. Prayers for you.
You’re not a hero, you’re a Nazi. There’s a special place in hell for all of you. You should move to China, you’d love it there
No, almost no children died from covid-19 with no co-morbidities. Far more children and teens have died from the Covid shot than actually died from covid. How many 16-20 year old athletes will have to drop dead on the field or on the court before people put down the Fruity Fauci Kool Aide and look around for themselves? Stop getting your news from the same three lying propagandists and look at their own numbers!
Maybe you missed the part about Covid vaccines not preventing transmission and how unvaccinated children have a 0% risk of mortality from Covid. Meanwhile countries with less restrictive policies fared much better in the end. Also, taking a vaccine just to uphold the social order, regardless of any effectiveness, side effects, or risks, is nothing more than an act of fealty to the state you serve. Some people prefer the idea of free will and individuality and don’t want to merely go with the herd to keep our leaders looking good.
“Plenty of healthy individuals and children died as well.”
You must have a different source of statistics, esp. where children are concerned. Covid is just not deadly to the vast, vast majority of kids.
“For schools that stayed open, look at how many teachers died.
And how many was that?
“you have no idea what a horrible death this was, not just for the patient but their families being unable to even be at their side. ”
Being unable to be by their side was due to policy not the actual disease. Plenty of people would have been willing to take the risk.
“The government is charged with keeping every citizen as safe as possible.”
I’ve had conversations with people who’ve made this statement before. It’s amazing how many people make this statement but never follow the logic of the argument to it’s inevitable conclusion. I wholeheartedly disagree that it’s the government’s job of keeping every citizen as safe as possible. There are several reasons for this but I’ll only cover a couple of the biggest reasons. Saying the government is responsible for this removes personal responsibility for your own safety. I’ll get back to that. A co-equal reason is, who determines what is safe as possible? Who determines what is safe and what is unsafe? Who determines the level of safety? Different people have different thresholds for levels of safety. That seems self-evident when you consider some people won’t fly because they’re afraid of heights and other people live for jumping out of airplanes. So, how safe is safe? Do we mandate that everyone who leaves their house wear bubblewrap suits and football helmets to keep them safe? As I’ve said to people before, a gorilla in zoo enclosure is about as safe as he can possibly be, but he’s not free. Also, the government isn’t interested in keeping people as safe as possible. If that were true, there would be zero tolerance for alcohol. According to the CDC, during the period of 2015-2019, more than 140,000 people died every year from alcohol related causes. That’s over 560,000 people in that time period who lost their lives from something easily preventable. The government didn’t and doesn’t seem to worry too much about the millions of people who’ve died over the decades, which brings me back to my first point about disagreeing that it’s the government’s job to keep us as safe as possible. It’s your job to keep you safe. For example, I have absolutely zero concern about Covid for me, my wife, or kids. You might, therefore, it’s your job to exist within the level of safety you feel comfortable with in regard to Covid. If you believe masks work (I don’t) and you want to wear one (or 2 or 3) everywhere you go, please do. That’s your prerogative. If masks work, you’re safe whether I wear one or not. For me, the bottom line is that I would rather be free and less safe than safe and not free.
“You don’t have a right to infect me or my family”
Saying that I don’t have a right to infect you or your family implies that you have a right to not be infected. That’s not an existing right, like it or not. We’re social creatures. The end result is we infect each other all the time. That’s just life. And death. Cheers!
Covid is a flu as stated when it first infected the World by China. Forced vaccines that hadn’t gone through 5 years testing should not have been mandated in a free world and it killed more than they will ever let you know bcz they don’t care.
You’re delusional: most children who died from C19 had serious immune problems, like cancer. Healthy kids who died, died of the flu. Fauci et al told us that people w/ serious comorbidities will die if they don’t vaxx. They died even vaxxed.
Flus attack different people. The 1917-8 ‘flu attacked the young and those w/strong immune system: in order to stave off the virus, the immune system fought so hard that it stopped people from breathing. This ‘flu attacked people w/weak immune systems.
The vax has been around for 20+ years, but did not go thru all the FDA tollgates: why not? What were the problems? And why were we forced to vax w/something still viewed as unsafe 3 months before C19? How do you explain that young, athletic, healthy people die suddenly, and the thing they have in common is that they were vaxxed? The huuuuuuge blood clots found by the medical examiners, and most deaths have to do w/heart attacks from enlarged hearts of perfectly healthy, young people?
Why were MDs threatened and silenced? The Great Barrington Declaration signers ( all scientists in these fields) were threatened/fired/cancelled? Why were we not allowed to use medicines that mitigated all these effects? The dean of USC’s med school is an epidemiologist, who was against all these measures; he was told to shut up, and threatened. Hospital staff REFUSED to take the shots after witnessing the disease… why?
Pfizer wants its data from its vax results to be held locked up for 75 years.. WHY? But now they want to vaxx babies…
Pharma cos paid media to talk up the vaxx, NOT as commercials, but as facts, incorporated in news stories.
As someone who grew up in communism, let me give you a hack: when government and media bray off the same song sheet in one part harmony and don’t let anyone have a different opinion, whatever they bray about is a damned lie. No exceptions.
You clearly have to remove your fingers out of your ears. He did not minimize the covid deaths. He certainly brought up – shudder- questions. Omg they might have answers ppl do not like!
Many professionals , doctors and nurses, and many other ppl do not agree with your take on the response to this covid . You are not the only one who feels for family members who were sickened or who died from this virus. Many questions , and censored scientific experts need to be heard so that we have scientific not emotional responses .
By the way the virus does not give a damn about your rights- u will get it from vaxed or unvaxed – so save the hate rhetoric of the unvaxed for the virus.
Pfizer acknowledged they didn’t test for transmissibility because they had to work “at the speed of science”.
The vaxx does not prevent transmission, so it does not prevent you from getting covid even with vaxxination. It is (allegedly) just supposed to prevent you from dying. People are dying from the vaxx and are getting severe adverse reactions. Where is covid now? It just vanished, but those pesky antivaxxers are all still being blamed for the pandemic.
Name one vaxx that does that? Did you know any of this before hand? No. Were you told the survival rate is 99.98%? No. You were told the vaxxines were 98% safe and effective… that number kept dropping. Now it’s 20% effective. Oops.
You, as a nurse, are following protocol. Those tests are under massive scrutiny for being very touchy and giving false positives, masks are also under scrutiny because they aren’t meant to be worn constantly and are cause bacterial lung infections… Spanish flu.. many died from infections of the lungs due to maks. The 6ft rule was made up and doesn’t absolutely nothing on top of it.
Interesting point about nothing for HIV… that also say something about all of this, as the vaxx is linked to compromised immune systems…. but I’m sure none of this will be valid to you. Not saying Bill is 100% right. He himself is vaxxed, apparently, but the guy does see something that isn’t adding up.
Congratulations Bill apparently the experts are not as educated as we were lead to believe. It also shows that the guest does not have a quest for knowledge since already has it!!!!! March on Bill I am beginning to respect you!!!
Wrong.
https://www.infectioncontroltoday.com/view/sweden-s-pandemic-experiment-book-review
Ah, yes, the ole “misinformation” from pharma controlled “news” site. Another CDC. I don’t believe any of them.