Give it a rest Bill Maher. You, and others keep saying that schools shouldn't have been closed

[question everything]

during Covid. How can you be so certain? And if schools were open and Covid would have quickly spread? Then all of you would have complained about the incompetence of the health authorities.

The only example that we had was the Spanish flu (Is it a banned term?) and we did not have the population density.

[True Dough]

1. Interesting thread on that topic

found here:

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100218804757

[question everything]

3. Of course closing he schools hurt the students but this is still a guessing game

Do we know of schools in comparable population densities that stayed open and students stayed healthy?

Still, who would have known how keeping the schools open would have influenced the spread?

And can we include factors of parents and neighbors? Did they stay home?

[lostnfound]

20. Kids are different in their experience, they will be fine missing a couple years of "education"

Maybe they learned the importance of caring for each other.
Or that it’s possible to sacrifice for the good of others.

[mopinko]

24. i look forward to some academic figuring out what they did learn.

cuz kids r always learning. they were free to learn stuff cuz they wanted to.
i know from experience that they learn best when it’s something they want to learn.

[rampartc]

29. more likely , from america's wonderful parents

the kids learned that masking and distancing are communist plots, almost as bad a fluoride, and that commie dictator xoe xiden is using the deadly vaccine to control their lives.

[DaBronx]

2. And he always fails to

Mention that over a million people died. He is sometimes right but mostly just likes to listen to himself spew shit.

[Duppers]

14. Yes, indeed!

Sick of him; stopped watching over a yr ago.

[Voltaire2]

32. He is a jackass.

Once he called out bullshit, now he propagates it.

[LakeVermilion]

4. Just who would be teaching these kids?

Teachers would have been committing suicide. Every kid would have been a time bomb.

[Voltaire2]

33. Indeed, Covid was mild for kids, not for adults.

[question everything]

41. After posting this I found this letter in the WSJ, responding to Dr. Atlas op-ed about the lockdown

In “Covid Lessons Learned, Four Years Later” (op-ed, March 19), Scott Atlas and Steve Hanke itemize policy errors made during the worst of the Covid epidemic. They identify prolonged school closings as the “worst” error of all, because “healthy children were always at vanishingly small risk from Covid.” What about the adults who teach and work in the schools?

[Silent Type]

5. Think it's a valid question, but thought it was correct decision at time and what we knew.

Sadly, a future crisis will come when we ignore the seriousness, to our detriment.

[RockRaven]

7. We DID ignore the seriousness, to our detriment.

The regional excess death numbers varying by partisan margin demonstrate as much.

[walkingman]

6. Maher is a broken record - covid...covid...covid

[brooklynite]

8. "we did not have the population density."

In the nation? Perhaps not. In the cities? Definitely.

[Earth-shine]

9. As they say, hindsight is 20/20. It's easy to look back and say that the schools and businesses could have been

opened here and there.

At the time, it seemed to shut things was the wisest choice. But, there were economic consequences for a lot us. Better that than catching COVID.

[larwdem]

10. wtf

He's an asshole fuck him,

[JohnSJ]

11. He keeps pushing that bullshit. Someone should point out to him that

a million people died because of assholes like him spreading falsehoods

I was also disappointed in them pushing the theme that we need to include the 80 million election deniers into the conversation.

WTF. That is why 80 million election deniers are around, because of this bullshit and giving them free airtime to spew their lies.

[SlimJimmy]

36. Wow, that's a lot of election deniers. Are you sure of the number?

I was also disappointed in them pushing the theme that we need to include the 80 million election deniers into the conversation.

[JohnSJ]

39. I thought I heard that number quoted by Maher or one of his guests on his show. Here is what I found:

"A recent Monmouth University poll found that as of May, about 30% of Americans believed the outcome of 2020 was the result of voter fraud. A poll by CNN this summer found that number rose to about 70% among Republicans, who said they believed President Joe Biden did not legitimately win the election."

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2023/10/09/election-deniers-running-for-office/70903244007/

In 2020:

81,282,916 votes Biden
74,223,369 votes. trump

Total votes: 155506285

51.3%. Biden
46.9%. trump

https://www.cookpolitical.com/2020-national-popular-vote-tracker

Taking 70% of 74223369 republicans who voted for trump in 2020 gives us 51956358 which is less than 80 million, which is still a significant number, if we believe the polls.

Taking 30% of 155506285 is 46651885

Even assuming between 46 million and 52 million are election deniers, that is pretty alarming.

and my point was that part of that problem I believe was because much of the media outlets, especially the right wing ones push that lie.

91% of talk radio is right wing:

https://www.americanprogress.org/article/talk-radio-by-the-numbers/#:~:text=Yet%20a%20startling%20percentage%20of,structural%20imbalances—not%20popular%20demand.

In other words giving lies a voice at the table only serves to perpetuate those lies.

[applegrove]

12. And what about that first year of covid before the vaxxine.

Kids could have stayed home for a year to keep hospitals from overflowing.

[BigmanPigman]

13. I'm still pissed at him for announcing "Covid Is Over"

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2022/01/24/don_lemon_bari_weiss_irresponsible_a_lot_of_people_are_tired_of_dealing_with_sick_people_who_wont_get_vaccinated.html

on his show in 2022 when that idiot Bari Weiss (ex NYTimes writer).and he knew more than all the doctors and scientists around the world. I had pretty much said "fuck off" before that but this show was the straw that broke this camel's back. He is a big baby and needs to shut the fuck up. The reason he is angry is because he lost money from doing stand up comedy and he had no audience for a while when he was filming from his house.

[JohnSJ]

15. Long COVID cases are on the rise, and the more times someone gets Covid, the

more likely they are likely to get long covid,, and complications

[rubbersole]

16. A good friend has long covid from 2020.

16 days in the ICU. The guy was 'the life of the party'. No energy to do anything. It's quite horrible.

[Cassidy]

17. How many orphans was he prepared to take in?

Early in the pandemic, I read an article about young people going home because the university campuses were closing. A young woman had returned home with asymptomatic Covid. Both of her parents caught it soon after and they both died. What a nightmare.

Yes, children have suffered because the schools were closed but death is final. It boggles my mind how willfully ignorant people are.

[question everything]

38. Yes, a nightmare. No doubt there are many stories like that

[KT2000]

18. It is getting tired

He keeps running this like he knew better than anyone else - and from the beginning. I guess he forgot the refrigerated trucks being used as morgues and a million people are dead from covid in the US. Is he trying to say he was right?
There were no answers in the beginning and it was responsible individuals doing the best they could for the safety of all of us. Some of the children kept home from school had their lives saved.

I think of Audrey Hepburn who was a promising ballerina until WWII happened and she had to stop her training to survive the war. Many children do not experience an idyllic childhood because things like wars and plagues happen.

Maher's smug attitude is getting old.

[Warpy]

19. He's said things like kids generally didn't get bac cases, like that was the whole story

Kids aren't the only ones to consider. There are teachers, library staff, office staff, lunchroom staff, custodians, and that's just of f the top of my head. Kids were unlikely to get bad cases. Not so everybody else in the building.

Any harm is likely to be temporary, kids are adaptable and will adapt back to being in school after being at home.

Staying home and masking when we went out was a reasonable response to a disease we had no immunity to and whish was killing some people, no way to predict who'd live or die.

Perhaps when the next bug hits us we'll have perfected AI Robo Teachers and automated all the other school jobs and the little darlings can go to school and cough and sneeze all the waynt. This time, it was better to shut the schools.

[question everything]

43. A former co worker, who used to vote D, in 2020 decided not o vote for any because her kids lost

ground. Well the oldest is now in college so whatever they “lost” apparently did not cause a permanent damage.

[Warpy]

46. Nope, it was the 2020 equivalent of the crack baby

Those kids did just fine once the drug was out of their system and kids who "lost ground" in the 2 years they were trying to learn online will make it up at lightspeed unless they should have been in remedial classes all along. In that case, maybe they'll finally get the help they needed from the beginning.

[sky_masterson]

21. kids are disease spreading machines

So keeping them from picking up covid and spreading it to their family's seems logical to me.
Bill has been an ass since he started wearing the Larry King glasses.

[Paladin]

22. Life's a lot better without Bill Maher.

Try it, you'll see...

[Baitball Blogger]

23. What ignorance. The definitive logical reason to shut down schools during Covid:

Because our hospital's services and resources were shut down due to the effort it took to keep people alive from Covid, and to protect others from getting infected.

Hard to believe that some Americans are so dense that they can't see how we as a country would be affected when this one basic public service is hogtied. Until we had a vaccine prepared to help society reach a natural immune level no one was protected, least of all teachers and parents that would be in the first wave of infection. Imagine the number of orphaned kids we would have today because their parents died from this virus if we hadn't taken precautions.

Is Bill Maher's Libertarian brain so calcified that he can't see this?

[OldBaldy1701E]

25. Yes. Yes, it is. (n/t)

[yorkster]

26. If this happens again be it Covid or similar, it will be

idiocy/arrogance like this that will have even more people than last time ignoring any public health warnings, etc.

[Walleye]

27. I don't listen to Shoulda, woulda, coulda

Anyone saying what should’ve been done after everything is all over is a waste. Any 10 year-old can tell you what you should’ve done after the event is over

[appmanga]

28. Maher is a prick...

...and an ill-informed dilletante who thinks he knows a lot more than he does. He seems to think, despite the evidence of very dead young people, COVID wasn't a significant danger to them. I've said this before: I once subscribed to HBO for Maher's show and "Curb". I gave up the subscription three years ago after figuring I could buy "Curb" on DVD and binge it at my leisure. Maher has never really been able to abandon his libertarian roots, something most people past puberty do quite easily when they realize the United States a diverse, complex society still carrying vestiges of its patriarchic white supremacy legacy.

The last time I watched (a couple of weeks ago) was to see how much bullshit he'd let Two-Faced Nancy Mace get away with. Maher didn't disappoint. He let her buffalo through as she tried to justify her accusation that George Stephanopoulos was trying to rape-shame her with no real pushback or challenge. Two-Faced is the same kind of a narcissistic egomaniac as Kyrsten Sinema, but lacks Sinema's brain power.

Most of the jokes and bits now fall flat, getting titters rather than guffaws and leaving Maher with the look of a man who just sharted but can't leave the room.

[JohnSJ]

40. What bothered me most about that show was Ro Khanna didn't push back on the Mace lies one bit, and when Maher asked him

if he would like to refute what she was saying, his response was, "I am being polite"

Pathetic

[radical noodle]

30. Many parents wanted the schools closed too

Although it was a hardship for them, they were extremely worried about their kids getting seriously ill. Even in bright red rural Indiana, the school where my daughter teaches saw parents extremely upset about the possibility of the schools spreading covid.

At that point in time, they had no idea how it spread and were taking maximum precautions to avoid infecting others. Remember they were even telling us to clean off our groceries with disinfecting spray after they were delivered. As they learned more about the virus, they were able to relax the rules. It made sense to me to be hyper vigilant at the time, until they knew more about it.

Perhaps some schools stayed closed too long, but I think the initial decision to close schools made sense under the circumstances.

[elias7]

31. They forget how rapidly Delta killed people and overwhelmed the hospital systems

Part of the school closures was to flatten the curve of illness so as not to further burden our healthcare systems

[boQwub-mydbuz-0nufnu]

34. Why do people listen to Bill Maher?

Pet peeve: Bill Maher is a comedian, an entertainer. Why do people still listen to him? He simply has “experts” on his show that he talks to, with witty little jokes sprinkled here and there. His opinion is useless. He is not “educated” in any special way. ANYBODY could fill his shoes. It is actually a media formula that is followed repeatedly, by “hosts” who are usually center-right white males, like Howard Stern, Don Imus, Joe Rogan — they all serve the purpose of providing a “whites man’s measuring stick” of judgment to the masses of followers unable to use their own brains. Fans look to these celebrity demagogues for assurance that their feelings are valid. Conservatives like to play the “feelings” card against liberals, yet it is conservatives that always need the most validation of their feelings because they have been indoctrinated to shun knowledge and education that is not in the service of God and Supremacy. #WWG1WGA

[question everything]

44. I liked a couple of his recent "New Rules" about attacking Israel

The War on the West

From the River to the Sea

Either way, welcome to DU

[aocommunalpunch]

35. I learn nothing from anything about this POS.

Time to filter out posts with his fucking name.

[beaglelover]

37. I liked his point of having a commission to study our response to the COVID pandemic so we can identify and

learn from our mistakes for the next pandemic.

I also love his new meme of showing Trump at his rallies doing this thing with his hands that looks like he's jerking off 2 guys at once. He says he's going to show that montage weekly just to piss off Trump!

[misanthrope]

47. We sort of had that to begin with

There were pandemic plans that had been formulated by the two administrations prior to Trump's. A lot of resources and expertise went into those plans and Trump discarded from the jump, which was how we got into that mess.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

42. I stopped watching or paying attention to Bill Maher a long time ago

[Johnny2X2X]

45. We did the right thing

We didn’t know enough about Covid then to take chances. Just because it ended up not affecting children as much doesn’t mean it stop wasn’t the right call.