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.”
Vaccines are great for young people with strong immune systems. They are significantly less effective for the elderly and newborns and the immuno-compromised.
So if you get a nice thick herd immunity of healthy people surrounding the immune-weak, you can avoid sudden rampant disease spread into - say - retirement homes or daycares, which spike the incidence of illness for everyone. Also, keeping rates of spread low reduces the incidence of mutation and the chance for a given virus to evade the current vaccination protocol.
This isn’t an individualist problem. Either we all immune together or we all get variants separately.
Less effective for the elderly compared to what? Staying unvaccinated? With diseases like COVID and flu the elderly are the group that should get vaccinated over nearly every other group.
"The data suggests that boosters and updated vaccines are more important for older adults. " source
Children are the second most important vaccination group after the elderly. Children represent the “high transmission” category. source
Well sure, because vaccines work by educating the immune system. Without a functioning one, a vaccine isn’t going to help much, which is why the rest of us with otherwise healthy immune systems need to be vaccinated because they can’t.
That doesn’t work with highly mutagenic diseases because exposure to infection doesn’t produce long standing immunity.