This week we’re telling YOU to snap out of it, Bill Maher! And we tell you this with sincere love. Four years ago, you caused a real stir among
your fellow atheists as they sought to reward you for your vigilant stance for
what’s right, as well as speaking up loudly for those of us who lack faith in
imaginary beings. We gave you an award
for your groundbreaking documentary, ‘Religulous,’ because you frankly deserved
it. Yet you had to spoil everything by
siding too closely with vaccine deniers who had already been largely
discredited by that point. You
disappointed us all by confusing the noise with the music and giving professional
bimbos like Jenny McCarthy additional credibility. It was a betrayal as deep and as hurtful as if Al Franken somehow endorsed Sarah Palin’s bid for the presidency!
Yes, you have since toned down your rhetoric,
declining for a time to speak out against vaccines in general. And you have also had the good decency to
keep your mouth shut about the subject for a few years while you focused
your attention on political bullshit instead.
Yet in the aftermath of anti-vaccination sheeple allowing measles to
creep back into our nation and threaten our kids, you have allowed yourself to
be pulled back into the debate. You seem
to have backpedaled on your original anti-vaccination stance, somewhat. You even told us all in your most recent
broadcast of Real Time that you were not an anti-vaxxer and were in favor of basic
health essentials such as the MMR vaccine (for measles, mumps and rubella)
being given to children. That’s a little
bit better. Yet somehow you still
maintain that the flu virus is somehow a scam perpetrated by Big Pharma. For evidence of this, you cite a report that
says that the flu vaccine was only 23% effective at stopping the flu this
season, and this, you tell us, is your vindication for all the flak you took on
this subject four years ago.
Well, Bill, let me break this down for
you in terms even Chris Christie and Rand Paul can understand: There are
hundreds and hundreds of varying strains of the flu virus out there! And any one of them could potentially give
you the flu. When someone receives a flu
shot in a given season, that flu shot only contains what the CDC has determined
to be the three, maybe four, likeliest strains of flu to be common that
year. Any more than that, and the cost
of producing the vaccine becomes too high.
But if a flu strain other than one of those three spreads unpredictably,
the flu shot won’t work. It’s a little
like protecting yourself from the rain with a leaky umbrella. It won’t keep you 100% dry, but it’s sure
better than nothing.
Well, an unpredictable strain of the
flu is infinitely more likely to spread if more and more people don’t get their
annual flu shot. People who get their
shots year after year are more immune than those who do not, and that helps
protect the other people around them.
This, because a different strain of the flu might not be in this year’s flu shot, but maybe it was
part of last year’s batch. Or the year
before. The more people who do regular
flu shots, the better. In other words,
the umbrellas may be leaky, but if everyone huddles together, not as much rain
will get through.
But Bill, fewer and fewer people are
getting their flu shots than ever before.
If fewer people get their flu shot, then any potential flu virus is more
likely to spread. And if fewer people
got their shot in the past, that adds to the likelihood that an unpredicted
strain will cause an epidemic. This year
that’s exactly what happened! You, Bill,
are part of the reason that happened! Your
23% figure is not a vindication of your original point, it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy which you,
unwittingly, helped to orchestrate! You
can say that you’re not an anti-vaxxer all you want, but the truth is, you ARE
an anti-vaxxer! Maybe not as insane as
Jenny McCarthy, but for some damned reason, just as stubborn! While you blame the McCarthys of the world
for their silliness in letting measles back into society, you fail to see how
your own big, fat mouth played a crucial role in all of it, especially among
those sensible enough to be otherwise more progressive in their views! And, sadly, several children have died from
this anti-vaccination nonsense – no, not from measles, but from the flu!
The embarrassment of your role in all this is hanging outside of your
zipper, tiny, pink and shriveled, for all the world to see!
Big Pharma profits from flu vaccines, you say? Let’s take a good look at that: Yes, the
companies that make flu vaccines are the big pharmacy companies. The top five are Sanofi, Merk, Glaxo
Smith-Kline, Pfizer, and Novartis – names we are all familiar with. But the scam is not in their production of
vaccines, but in their lack of
production of them. If they produce
enough vaccine for everybody, then some of the vaccine will not be used due to
over-production. This results in a very
large financial loss to these companies.
So, to ensure that their profit margin isn't jeopardized, they
deliberately produce too little of the vaccines needed in a given year. This keeps the price artificially high, and
prevents any possibility of overproduction biting into their profits. This is why, whenever there is a huge flu
outbreak, the media reports that only children and the elderly should receive
the flu shots. There isn't enough to go
around, and so the most vulnerable need to move to the front of the line!
But the outrage doesn't end there. When fewer people get their vaccines, the various flu viruses get to
spread! This increases demand and jacks
up the price of that which they already under-produced! The more anti-vaccination people there are
out there, the higher Big Pharma’s profit margin gets! The scam isn't in the vaccines, it’s in the lack of vaccines! And it’s high time you understood that!
Bill, we love you, but damn it all,
our heroes being right only 98% of the time just plain drives us bat-shit
crazy! Therefore, Mr. Real Time, we at
the Sacred Cow Wursthaus take great pride in ripping off your overpriced silken
necktie and whipping it across that bigass nose sitting on your
unjustifiably smug face. Bill Maher, snap out of it!
Eric
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