Sorry, can’t find any better sources for this.
The animator then asked Maher what the “downside” of “getting a vaccine” was, which caused the comedian to go on an anti-vax tirade.
“The fact that you the fact that you don’t even have a clue what’s the cost of getting a vaccine that you don’t know the answer to that. You completely want to shut your eyes to the fact that there are repercussions to all medical interventions, including a vaccine, all vaccines,” he ranted. “They come, they say side effects, just like every medication does. You can see it in the literature. They can’t write it on their back on the vaccine. So you have to dig them. And of course, there is a vaccine court because so many people have been injured.”
Some of the issue in the US at least IMO is how the system turns patients into customers. People do have negative experiences with doctors for valid and invalid reasons, and if they can just pay for a “doctor” who does some BS pseudoscience, they see those credentials and they are getting much more “compassionate” care, they might even feel legitimately better after an experience like that. Doctors I think can become desensitized to patients sometimes or they just aren’t good at social skills. Like you have a potentially life threatening tumor removed and ask your doctor why you got it, and they just say “meh you’re just unlucky,” which is absolutely true, but it’s not at all sensitive to the patient’s experience to be that blunt. Go in to the happy naturopath office and it’s much different, “oh well lets look at your diet to assess your toxicity profile, we can come up with a plan and some steps etc etc.” I totally see why people go for that.
I try not to blame people for their choices within this system because despite all the pseudoscience bs that they’re paying for there’s often perfectly rational reasons behind it, and I fully accept the placebo effect as legitimate. The placebo effect isn’t just a trick that works on dumb people it’s a very real physiological thing. If people are primed by an incredibly compassionate doctor who practices naturopathy or homeopathy, and despite the financial incentive they have maybe actually cares about the patients, they will actually feel better and it will actually benefit them. That’s a huge complication for treating everyone who does this as simply stupid and misinformed, which they may be but that alone wouldn’t explain a lot of this.
So blaming stupid patients I don’t think helps and I believe the solution to healthcare and the mental health crisis (popular term for it) is ultimately political.