Here is what he said the other day:
GUTFELD: “He is the most pathetic tool on the face of the earth. And I hope his career is dead, and he ends up sleeping in a car the way his life began. This video only made me want to go out and only buy a gun. He thinks this is biting satire and going after rural America and a dead man. Let’s talk about Charlton Heston. Charlton Heston was one of the first actors to be behind the civil rights movement and march. What did this jackass Jim Carrey do? He was behind the anti-vaccine panic. There are what, 165,000 people that died from measles last year, according to the World Health Organization.”
“Jim Carrey has killed more people than all the rifles combined,” Gutfeld continued. “He is a dirty, stinking coward. He is a moral coward.
"165,000 people that died from measles last year?" Gee you would kind of think that a statistic like that would have made huge news and that the nation would essentially be in a panic over such an epidemic. Why haven't we heard of this?
Oh, because it is bullshit.
What Gutfeld is all in a tizzy over is Carrey's 2008 statement's suggesting there was a link between vaccines and autism in this country, a belief that is fairly widely held, especially among parents with autistic children.
Now the science on that proved to be false, and was largely based on a now discredited study conducted by Andrew Wakefield.
However clearly Jim Carrey believed the connection was real and, believing he was doing a public service, used his fame to warn others.
Now did this cause an uptick in measles cases? Well perhaps, but it was nowhere near the number that Gutfield claims. This from the CDC concerning last year's numbers:
Each year, on average, 60 people in the United States are reported to have measles. But, in 2011, the number of reported cases was higher than usual—222 people had the disease. Nearly 40% of these people got measles in other countries, including countries in Europe and Asia. They brought the disease to the United States and spread it to others. This caused 17 measles outbreaks in various U.S. communities.
As you can see only a few hundred caught the disease, many of them while overseas, and no one apparently died from it.
Speaking of overseas, THAT is apparently where Gutfeld went to get his data:
In 2011, there were 158 000 measles deaths globally – about 430 deaths every day or 18 deaths every hour.
Now the idea of connecting some articles on Huffington Post written by an American actor, as having contributed to thousands of deaths around the world seems like a bridge to nowhere in my mind, but hey this is Fox News, why would they be bothered with researching any of those pesky "facts.?"
However if they had, they might have learned this:
More than 95% of measles deaths occur in low-income countries with weak health infrastructures.
Yes, the outbreaks primarily happen in countries that do not have the luxury of surfing the internet to read Jim Carrey's opinion on vaccinations. Sort of hard to blame them on him, don'tcha think?
So has Jim Carrey actually "killed more people than all rifles combined?" Well unless there have been a whole lot of unreported cases of people laughing themselves to death at his movies, than no, of course not. And anybody who thinks so is an ignorant douchebag. Or watcher of Fox News, assuming there is a difference
Which brings up the question of whether this Greg Gutfeld is the MOST ignorant douchebag over at Fox News?
Well he DOES have some stiff competition....
And considering the company he keeps that is really quite an accomplishment.
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