Science correspondent Linda Geddes authored a column for The Guardian entitled “Joe Rogan’s Covid claims: what does the science actually say?” which was published 31 January 2022. The article claims Joe Rogan, creator of the wildly popular “Joe Rogan Experience” podcast (JRE) has “made numerous disputed claims about virus, vaccines and lockdowns” and, unlike almost every other Rogan detractor, Geddes actually attempts to name six examples of these “disputed claims”.
Note that she doesn’t call the claims “false” or “inaccurate”, which would be the bar needed to censure a journalist. A disputed claim is merely any statement that someone disagrees with. What kind of a free press would we have if there were a large movement to de-platform every journalist who published anything that someone else disputed?
Without further ado, here are the six example, Geddes cites:
“Healthy young people don’t need a Covid vaccine”
Geddes faults Rogan for saying, during his 23 April 2021 episode, “If you’re like 21 years old, and you say to me, should I get vaccinated? I’ll go, no.”
If getting the vaccine were a good idea for young people, one would expect the data would show a lower death rate for vaccinated young people than for unvaccinated young people. While it is true that young people can be damaged or killed by COVID-19, being vaccinated does not appear to lower the overall death rate for people under 60 years old. In fact, being vaccinated appears to more than double the overall death rate (from all causes), according to an analysis of UK Office of National Statistics (ONS) data by Alex Berenson. The “all causes” data is important, because death is an outcome that can’t be ignored or fudged. While the data do not prove the COVID vaccines were the cause of death, they also don’t prove vaccines weren’t the cause of death. Fact checkers have made much of the obvious point that these numbers don’t “prove causality” and, technically, they are every bit as correct as all the tobacco scientists who argued for many decades with regard to smoking and lung cancer that “correlation is not causation”.
But, that still leaves a very big question: If the cause of the 100% increase in the death is not the vaccines, what does account for it? And, until we know the answer, why would anyone opt into a group that is twice as likely to die?
It would be interesting to hear more from Mr. Berenson about these issues, but he’s since been de-platformed off of Twitter, presumably because he made too many disputed claims.
2. “The myocarditis risk is higher from vaccines than from Covid”
As Geddes reports, Rogan’s guest for his 12 January 2022 episode, Josh Szeps, immediately rebutted Rogan’s assertion citing data from the US Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices that “suggested” a rate of about 450 myocarditis cases per million Covid-19 infections among boys as compared to 77 myocarditis cases per million after vaccination. So, if all this is correct, the only ones harmed by Rogan’s mis-statement were those who immediately turned off the program after Rogan’s statement and before Szeps spoke.
But is it true?
The biggest problem with the statements of both Rogan and Szeps is that they’re comparing apples and oranges. They are NOT comparing the relative risk of myocardia between vaxxed and unvaxxed individuals, which is what we’d want to know before deciding whether or not to take the vaccine. They are comparing the risk of getting the vaccine with the risk of getting the virus. If you’re going to compare vaccinated people who don’t get infected with unvaccinated people who DO get infected, you’re setting up a false comparison. Either you should compare the outcomes of those who are vaxxed AND get infected with those who are unvaxxed AND get infected OR you should compare the outcomes of those who are vaxxed and don’t get infected with those who are unvaxxed and don’t get infected, OR, better yet, you should simply compare the rates of myocardia between vaxxed and unvaxxed individuals regardless of whether they get infected with COVID.
The latter comparison reveals results such as “The risk of myocarditis or myopericarditis appears to be about three- to fourfold higher for those who receive the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine compared with unvaccinated individuals” according to Danish population data cited here.
3. “Ivermectin can drive this pathogen to extinction”
Rogan’s 18 June 2021 guest, Bret Weinstein, an evolutionary biologist and creator of the Dark Horse podcast, made this statement.
This single statement is probably the most controversial of all the statements made on Rogan’s show. If it is true that Ivermectin is a safe and effective preventative and/or treatment for COVID-19, it could undermine the entire rationale for the FDA’s granting of EUA’s (Emergency Use Authorizations) for the COVID vaccines. According to FDA guidelines, EUA’s should not be granted if there are existing, known safe and effective alternatives. If Ivermectin or any other generic, past-patent drug were found (or admitted) to be such a safe and effective alternative to vaccines, it would prevent the vaccines from being distributed for human use until they were able to pass all of the usual animal testing and three stages of clinical trials. So, this one statement is probably the one that is most vehemently attacked.
And yet, the Cochrane Review referenced by Geddes in the Guardian article was nothing but a sick joke. Supposedly, a fair re-evaluation and aggregation of data from multiple previous studies (a meta-analysis), study leader Dr. Andrew Hill admitted to Dr. Tess Lawrie, lead author of another better meta-analysis, that he had been under extreme pressure to alter the study conclusions by staff at Unitaid and that people at Unitaid had a say in what the conclusions of the Cochrane study would be. The entire Zoom conversation between Lawrie and Hill was recorded and a full transcript appears in Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s new book “The Real Anthony Fauci” in Chapter 1, section III, pages 49–52. Dr. Anthony Hill is shown to be a pathetic sell-out, willing to trade risking the lives of millions to secure his continuing career success.
Suffice it to say that Kennedy’s book is devastating to the medical establishment’s bias in favor of mRNA “vaccines” as well as their resistance to and suppression of off-label generic drugs like Ivermectin. Many people will have been told not to listen to Kennedy because he’s been labeled an “anti-vaxxer”. He isn’t. He wants dangerous ingredients taken out and he wants safe and effective alternatives to be freely available. According to studies cited in Kennedy’s book, Ivermectin protocols could prevent as many as 75% of COVID deaths and 80% of hospitalizations. If true, it means that it is the medical establishment that should be made to answer for disseminating misinformation, not Joe Rogan. Even, if it weren’t true, America owes the Kennedy family so much more than the mere willingness to read a simple book even if it didn’t contain information that could save millions of lives.
I could go on and on listing the studies in multiple countries that underscore the profound efficacy of Ivermectin against COVID, citing meta-analyses that repeatedly find in favor of Ivermectin’s efficacy and more, but Kennedy has already done the work in his book and there is no point in me repeating it. Get the book. Read the book. Understand why arguments resting entirely on the Cochrane Review led by Dr. Andrew Hill are ridiculous.
4. “mRNA vaccines are gene therapy”
According to the records on archive.org, at some time between 18 January 2021 and 26 January 2021, Merriam-Webster changed their definition of vaccine from:
“: a preparation of killed microorganisms, living attenuated organisms, or living fully virulent organisms that is administered to produce or artificially increase immunity to a particular disease”
To:
“: a preparation that is administered (as by injection) to stimulate the body’s immune response against a specific infectious disease:
a: an antigenic preparation of a typically inactivated or attenuated (see ATTENUATED sense 2) pathogenic agent (such as a bacterium or virus) or one of its components or products (such as a protein or toxin)
b: a preparation of genetic material (such as a strand of synthesized messenger RNA) that is used by the cells of the body to produce an antigenic substance (such as a fragment of virus spike protein)”
thus adding mRNA to the definition. Before 26 January 2021, one might have been considered in error if they described mRNA injections as “vaccines” and yet, despite all the occurrences where people mistakenly called mRNA shots “vaccines”, no one made much of a big deal about it.
As of this writing (7 February 2022), Merriam-Webster defines “gene therapy” as follows:
: the insertion of usually genetically altered genes into cells especially to replace defective genes in the treatment of genetic disorders or to provide a specialized disease-fighting function
Note that “or to provide a specialized disease-fighting function” provides a loophole whereby an mRNA application, such as the COVID vaccines, need not permanently “replace defective genes in the treatment of genetic disorders” but can also simply “provide a specialized disease-fighting function”. Therefore, according to Merriam-Webster, Joe Rogan’s use of the term “gene therapy” to describe mRNA-based COVID vaccines is, technically, quite correct.
5. “I’m not gonna get vaccinated. I have antibodies, it doesn’t make any sense.”
The CDC has been slow to admit it, but natural antibodies are approximately 3–4 times more effective against the COVID Delta variant than the vaccines, according to a CDC study cited on the Children’s Health Defense website:
The latest CDC study examined four categories of people in California and New York between May and November 2021: unvaccinated and vaccinated who survived a previous COVID infection, and unvaccinated and vaccinated who had never been infected.
While the highest case rates were among those who had neither previous exposure nor vaccination, the outcomes with Delta for those who were unvaccinated but previously exposed were substantially better than for those whose immunity came from vaccination alone.
Unvaccinated, recovered individuals had infection rates 14.7 (N.Y.) to 29 (Calif.) times lower than those who had no immunity, while the vaccinated who had no prior COVID exposure had rates 4.5 (N.Y.) to 6.2 (Calif.) lower than those without any immunity.
The results were similar for hospitalization: Those with natural immunity were 2- 6 times less likely to be hospitalized than those with vaccinated immunity alone.
That doesn’t prove that Joe wouldn’t be better off with BOTH natural immunity and vaccine-induced immunity, but for someone who is wary of potential side effects, knowing that they’re already better protected than they would be if they’d had the vaccine instead of a COVID infection, might just provide a sense of security that makes the decision not to vaccinate easier for them. Certainly, Rogan has a right to decide what makes sense for his own body and his own health.
6. Lockdowns “make things worse”
What if I told you that researchers at the Johns Hopkins University are saying exactly the same thing and all the data in a meta-analysis of 34 studies of lockdown and shelter-in-place-orders (SIPOs) support their conclusion that lockdown & SIPO policies should be rejected.
Does this make you want to call for de-platforming these JHU researchers too?
In summary, none of the six supposed examples of dangerous misinformation on the JRE show can be fairly categorized as misinformation or disinformation. Rogan and his guests have certainly said controversial things, but their statements are supported by the best research.
The tables are turned. The JRE show is a better source of COVID information that most MSM outlets who continue to spew the uncorrected false statements from the CDC, WHO and NIAID. If more people were aware of the benefits of Ivermectin mentioned on JRE, it’s likely that millions of lives could be saved and the pandemic re-infection rate could probably be brought below 1.0, leading to extinction of the COVID viruses (and the pandemic) in the near term.
I call on all musicians who’ve removed their music from Spotify to return to the platform and apologize to both Joe Rogan and Spotify, the company. I call on every media personality who has maligned Joe Rogan in their public statements or reportage to issue full retractions and apologies as well.
We are all indebted to Joe Rogan for his fearless and accurate treatment of COVID on his podcast. If only others in the public eye were as perceptive and inclined toward integrity in their work.
https://nationalpost.com/health/johns-hopkins-study-finding-lockdowns-do-little-to-prevent-covid-deaths-flawed-critics-say