News/Commentary

Maher points out COVID ‘dissenters are looking pretty good’ right now

March 4, 2023 | | Print Article

During the latest episode of HBO’s “Real Time,” liberal comedian Bill Maher praised all the COVID “dissenters” who’d refused to blindly accept the establishment’s narrative on both the virus itself and also the vaccine.

“I feel like we’re entering this phase now with COVID where we are in a period when we can have perspective, we can look back — it’s over. And so there’s been a number of studies recently that have come out about things like natural immunity, mask wearing, lockdowns, and of course the big one this week about the lab leak theory,” he said.

“I feel like the people who were the dissenters are looking pretty good. I was one of them. I remember getting a lot of s–t from a lot of places. Somebody dug this up for me this week. The Daily Beast had a headline: ‘Bill Maher Pushes Steve Bannon Wuhan lab COVID conspiracy,'” he added.

He then noted that no, in fact, it wasn’t just Steve Bannon.

“It was, you know, the former head of the CDC. It’s the FBI. It’s the Energy Department. We don’t know. Like I said, we shouldn’t politicize it,” he said.

Listen:

His point was that nobody knows for certain where COVID originated. There are just theories. Which is why it was wrong for the establishment to reflexively dismiss the lab leak theory as a conspiracy theory.

This has become especially evident recently because of a bombshell report from The Wall Street Journal revealing that the U.S. Department of Energy has concluded that COVID most likely originated via a lab leak.

“The Energy Department’s conclusion is the result of new intelligence and is significant because the agency has considerable scientific expertise and oversees a network of U.S. national laboratories, some of which conduct advanced biological research,” the Journal reported last month.

This means at least two government agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, believe the lab leak theory is legitimate.

“The FBI previously came to the conclusion that the pandemic was likely the result of a lab leak in 2021 with ‘moderate confidence’ and still holds to this view,” the Journal noted.

In fairness, the Energy Department’s conclusion was reached with “low confidence.” Still, two federal government agencies endorsing a theory means that said theory is certainly no mere conspiracy theory.

News of the DoE’s ruling caused quite a stir on social media, with lab leak theory proponents saying that it was definitive proof that all the so-called “conspiracy theorists” were right all along.

“Everything we were called conspiracy theorists and horrible racists for saying … was TRUE. Every single thing. Vindication is not enough. We need apologies. We need our lives back,” one proponent wrote.

See more responses below:

Continuing the discussion on “Real Time,” Maher then asked his guest, Russell Brand, “Would you agree that the dissenters are looking better these days?”

“I think dissent is a great duty around all topics, and partisanship … ultimately leads us into cul-de-sacs culturally. What I feel is that we were too desperate to shut down conversation in a state of escalated fear. We were unwilling to ironically listen to science,” Brand replied.

“Science does not exist objectively. It exists within a subset of capitalist agendum, and the problem I feel that we had is the only experimentation was taking place that was beneficial to certain interests, only arguments were being advanced that were beneficial to certain interests, only regulations were being imposed that were beneficial to certain interests,” he added.

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Vivek Saxena
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