All of a sudden Bill Maher is the darling of the right, because the segment below aligns with a current right wingnut talking point, namely that stay at home and social distancing policies were a monumental overreaction, a violation of civil and constitutional rights, and medically and scientifically unwarranted.
Who needs scientists when all we need is common sense? You have no reason to fear the coronavirus, because your immune system is all you need, as evidenced by the fact that you let your dog lick you. Voila! Q.E.D.
Do we really need to spend a lot of time explaining how monumentally stupid Bill’s rant is? Before antibiotics came on the scene, infectious diseases were often fatal. Before vaccines were developed, polio and smallpox and numerous other diseases that are now as rare as an honest politician ruined millions of lives every year. Do we even need to mention syphilis? The point is simple: your immune system is really effective against whatever it is that is lurking in dog saliva, but it is often defeated by scores of diseases.
Here’s another thing to think about: the common cold. Adults catch a cold on average 2 to 4 times a year. There is no cure for the cold, but your immune system eventually eliminates it from your body. But why does it keep coming back? There are two reasons. One, there are many different viruses that cause a cold, so even if you develop immunity against one, you can still catch a different one. Second, the immunity built up against a cold virus does not necessarily last your lifetime. In other words, you might lose the immunity after a couple years and become susceptible to the virus again.
Covid-19 is caused by a new coronavirus. We know very little about it. We have no vaccine for it, and we do not know how long antibodies to it last or whether those antibodies confer immunity against the new coronavirus. For most people, the immune system is enough to eliminate the virus after a couple weeks, with no or mild symptoms. It causes a significant minority, however, to become sick, really sick, needing hospitalization and intensive care units.
I guess Bill doesn’t get this, so maybe it needs to be expressed in a way he would understand — dog licks. Imagine that getting licked by your dog was harmless, usually, but fatal about 1 percent of the time. Would you still let your dog lick you? I didn’t think so.