Bill Maher makes Bill Frist look smart

How hard is that? Pretty hard, right?

A lot of people, liberals especially, get ideas from Bill Maher. In truth, he does have some good ideas, but much of what he says comes in a reactionary context.

His vaccine thing is an illustration of this point, and of how dangerous it is to let someone like him, without a well-formulated framework of thought, guide your own thinking.

Take this discussion on the H1N1 vaccine. It sounds appealing. Right now a lot of people are skeptical of the government, and of this particular vaccine, and not all of them are anti-vaxxers. But listen to what Maher says at just about 0:45 of this video. "I would never get a swine flu vaccine, or any other vaccine."

"Or any other vaccine."

He'd rather take his chance with measles, which used to cause hundreds of deaths per year in the United States before the vaccine was developed?

Or polio, which infected almost 60,000 people and killed more than 3,000 in the United States in 1952 alone? Or would he rather be one of the 440,000 people in the United States at risk of developing post-polio syndrome?

Or perhaps he'd rather be one of the 300-500 million people who died of smallpox in the 20th Century.

Or maybe he just figures that he won't get one of these diseases, and when he has kids he won't get one of them, so if it means he's subjecting other people to them, well that's just too bad.

There are always too many reasons to distrust government. So don't. Listen to the scientists, not the comedians.