Let’s say hypothetically that you are a huge podcaster who has achieved over a billion plays across multiple platforms. For the sake of argument, let’s assume that you have a large enough fanbase that even if just ten percent of your audience believes in your word, that would be millions of people. In fact, other famous people support your views and hold you in regard.
Imagine being Joe Rogan
If you have watched or listened to Rogan over the last year, you have definitely been through an experience. If you just scroll down the JRE subreddit, you would see people dunking him like donuts. He often makes incorrect statements or allows his guest to make extreme statements without any pushback. Unfortunately for us, we do not have to look far as we can see one of the worst examples of Joe Rogan being Roe Jogan in his interview with Dr. Peter McCullough. At best, Rogan passively goes with debunkable trash arguments and, at worse, actively distributes misinformation that is so beyond parody that the onion is declaring bankruptcy.
At the start of this video, Rogan states that he believes that Big Pharma wants to continue to fearmonger about covid-19 and that vaccines are the only way to stop the spread from making money. This is often a conspiracy that anti-vaxxers or anti-vax adjacent people will make in an attempt to sound like they are against corporations. The issue with this is that Rogan’s sure way to fight against big pharma’s grasp of covid-19 treatment is to order copious amounts of monoclonal antibodies, which has had decent results in the past, which is primarily pushed out by Regeneron and other companies. These companies are all a part of Big Pharma. Essentially, Joe Rogan is the type of guy who goes to the local Coca-Cola center and tells them to screw off because the soft drink industry is too woke and then drives to the local gas station to buy a diet mountain dew.
Unfortunately, this statement from Rogan is the best part of the episode. Rogan lays up the conspiracy, and McCullough slams it down by stating that the Pfizer vaccine was not FDA approved in the United States. This is obviously false, but he continues to say it’s not an actual FDA approval because it did not go through proper procedures such as lacking a package insert while not listing any side effects and does not have any warning labels about the side effects. Rogan absorbs this blatant falsehood, does not object, but agrees to this insane misinformation. Anyone can readily see the Pfizer vaccine granted FDA approval on the FDA website. Within this, anyone can publicly view the approval letter, regulatory action summaries, side effects, including clearing up anything with infertility in women, and the package insert.
After investigating McCullough further, things only get worse. He was recently fired and sued by his former workplace for continuing to attach himself to the company’s brand in media and speaking appearances, in my opinion, to increase his legitimacy after he was canned.
Why would he feel the need to do such a thing?
McCullough is part of another organization called the association of American physicians and surgeons, or AAPS for short. The AAPS is a politically conservative nonprofit that has promoted aids denialism and stated that vaccines can lead to autisms. In addition, being homosexual reduces your life expectancy by 8 to 20 years. Needless to say, these claims are outlandish and have been debunked by actual health experts from the American Academy of Pediatrics and the World Health Organization. These debunks are living rent-free in their head as the AAPS takes a stand against “sham peer reviews” on their website. The AAPS is heavily against public healthcare to the point where they do not want any talk of universal healthcare or even want Obamacare, a mostly right-wing healthcare plan pushed in the 90s. So this is probably why this McCullough is not in favor of publicly-funded vaccines. So he pushes out information that can easily be debunked in under five minutes. The entire organization he is a part of is known to publish wild misinformation. Not a great guest to have on your show during a pandemic where the disease can spread rapidly and has killed millions worldwide.
Even if Rogan second guesses some of the information during a later podcast, the damage has been done as people eat up false talking points and ask for more. This means you have hundreds of thousands of people doing their “own research” and “learning” from a “trusted doctor.” A doctor, who has been fact-checked directly and debunked indirectly through actual organizations in America and in countries such as Denmark that shows about 2 cases of myocarditis after the vaccine with a sample of 5 million people. You have a 0.002 percent chance of getting mild myocarditis that is not long-lasting with profound implications. Meanwhile, the death percentage in the United States is around two percent. So let’s say the entire united states population of an estimated three hundred and thirty-three million contracted covid-19. With a two percent death rate, that would kill approximately six million people or the equivalent of the united states engaged in fifteen World War 2's.
However, let’s get back to the fact that Rogan himself promotes ivermectin, which is not FDA-approved at all. He also praises monoclonal antibodies. Most of them have emergency use authorization which anti-vaxxers often use to draw suspicion of the vaccine. Unfortunately, monoclonal antibodies are increasingly failing due to the rapid growth of covid-19 variants. This could change in the future, but it is not something anyone should be counting on right now.
The worst part of all of this is that Rogan’s misinformation campaign, intentional or unintentional, has severe consequences for consumers. If you identify as a republican, we know that you are more likely to be unvaccinated. We also know that unvaccinated people who contract covid-19 are roughly 14 times more likely to die. If you are fully vaccinated, you are less likely to be admitted to the hospital. Across 32 states, the fully vaccinated population is hospitalized at a rate under one percent.
The last myth that people like Rogan tout is that if you are young and healthy, you have nothing to worry about. While it is true that if you are young and healthy, you stand a better chance. However, it does not make you immune to the deadly consequences, as anti-vaccine world champion kickboxer Frederic Sinistra found out. Due to believing in a horde of falsehoods and lies, Sinistra refused vaccination and even left the hospital early. Unfortunately, he would die from complications a few days later. If you do not pass, you could end up like championship wining pro hockey player Josh Archibald. But, unfortunately, he is now out indefinitely due to the virus, ironically, developing into myocarditis. While these are anecdotes, if covid-19 can cut through two championship-winning athletes, a planet fitness membership will not serve as a substitute to the vaccine. Donald Trump is dishing out more accurate information on vaccines than Joe Rogan is currently. I can’t credit him too much because he got the whole vaccine conspiracies started to begin with.
Rogan has a vast audience, and without a doubt, some of his fans have followed his advice. Unfortunately, some of them have contracted covid-19 and have died or could face long-lasting effects, with myocarditis being one of them. For this reason, this new Joe Rogan is worst than you could possibly imagine.
If you would like to hear my exceptional vocal talent and watch a video version of this article, it can be found here. Yes, I am aware the Ben Shaprio joke at the start might go, whoooosh!
