Agreed, they get very rich off peddling disinformation to simpletons. Fuckers like Joe Rogan and Pierre Kory and Peter McCullough and Alex Berenson should be in prison.
Remember when you couldn’t get a pint without food and only certain pubs were allowed open. It was complete madness.
Science
What did he lie about?
I thought having the toys and clothes aisles in Tesco cordoned off really was a turning point in the fight against the virus
I thought we were being specific to Covid?
I mean, if fellas want a list of lies from people, Fauci, Holohan and co will most certainly win that battle
Fair play to the man admitting he was given false information and owning his mistake. What lies did he tell about covid?
Not unlike Sledge, he’s not to be trusted.
I’m sure a list of all his lies during Covid will come flooding in any second now anyway
Perhaps, but you cant trust a man who lies. Its simple really.
So if a liar told you to close everything in the country, you’d not do it?
Mate, you asked what did he lie about, I told you, then I warned you not to trust a man who lies. I’m only trying to help you here.
And I miss @tank. Fuck it, what a waste of a life. And what a life well lived. Live well Tank.
RIP.
The leader we needed, but not the one that we deserved
One said it was the vast size of his audience that made him so dangerous. Another suggested it was the fact the average age of his listeners was just 24, and hence particularly persuadable.
Another expert said he appeared to have a cult of personality. One said he had repeatedly spread misinformation about Covid, and ignored calls to stop.
These were among just some of the accusations levelled at Joe Rogan, podcaster, influencer and sometime actor, from more than 150 scientists, doctors and healthcare professionals who have said the 54-year-old was “extraordinarily dangerous”.
In an open letter, the experts called on Spotify, host of the The Joe Rogan Experience (JRE) podcast, to take action to halt the spread of false information about the coronavirus and the efficacy and safety of vaccines.
“Throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, Joe Rogan has repeatedly spread misleading and false claims on his podcast, provoking distrust in science and medicine,” wrote the experts from the US, Canada, Britain and Australia.
“He has discouraged vaccination in young people and children, incorrectly claimed that mRNA vaccines are ‘gene therapy’, promoted off-label use of ivermectin to treat COVID-19 (contrary to FDA warnings), and spread a number of unsubstantiated conspiracy theories.”
One of the signatories, Anand Swaminathan, assistant professor of emergency medicine at St Joseph’s University Medical Centre in Paterson, New Jersey, told The Independent at the very core of the threat was the sheer number of people receiving this misinformation,
At least 11m people listen to each episode of The JRE, while Rogan claimed in 2019 his show received 190 million downloads a month.
“Much of the alarm stems from the immense following Rogan has. If an anti-science, anti-vaccine personality has 10 followers, the impact would be minimal. I would have just as much of an issue with the comments but it would still create less total harm,” he said.
“Rogan has millions of followers and tens of millions of downloads/month. The combination of anti-science, anti-vaccine rhetoric with a large platform is an enormous issue and, in this case, an enormous threat to public health.”
Imogen Coe, Founding Dean of the Faculty of Science at Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada, claimed Rogan has not simply spread misinformation once, but kept doing so.
“Why would someone deliberately share information that is potentially damaging to the health and well being of others? That needs to be addressed and health professionals in particular have a duty of care and scientists have an ethical responsibility to speak up,” she said.
Joe Rogan continues to ignore covid science even as he reads it out loud
Asked how an open society should balance free speech and discussion with the need to combat misinformation about the spread of Covid, she said: “There appears to be a conflation with ‘free society’ meaning anyone can say anything, including misinformation and falsehoods, without being held accountable for it.”
She added: “Falsehoods and misinformation that lead to illness and death (which happens when scientific consensus and public health directives are undermined) surely must be challenged in a free society.”
The signatories to the letter ranged across disciplines and included a number of psychologists worried about the influence Rogan appears to hold over his audience.
The letter pointed out the average age of The JRE listener was just 24, and that data from Washington state in the US suggested “unvaccinated 12-34 year olds are 12 times more likely to be hospitalised with Covid, than those who are fully vaccinated”.
“People get sick and die when physicians spread misinformation and undermine evidence-based public health interventions,” said Dr Jonathan Stea, a clinical psychologist at Canada’s University of Calgary.
“And celebrities have a large platform from which they can amplify misinformation. If the pandemic has had any silver lining, it’s that it has highlighted the dangers of tolerating a culture that allows pseudoscience to remain unchecked.”
The open letter came as Covid’s impact continues to reverberate globally. The total death toll from the virus is close to 5.5million, with 850,000 of those in the US.
Meanwhile, in Britain prime minister Boris Johnson is fighting for his political life after it was revealed he and his staff held drinks parties in the garden of his Downing St offices while the rest of the country was in lockdown.
In Australia, which took some of the toughest measures against Covid, Novak Djokovic, the world’s number one male tennis player, and a vaccine sceptic, was recently deported and has missed the Australian Open after officials ruled he could not enter the country as he had not been vaccinated – a federal requirement.
Another signatory, Eden Maness, a psychiatry research fellow at Harvard Medical School, pointed out the pandemic was now entering its third year.
“Allowing discredited individuals onto a popular podcast to offer debunked and potentially dangerous misinformation related to Covid, and its treatment – particularly when the target demographic of this podcast is largely composed of young adults who erroneously believe they are impervious to the detrimental and potentially long-term consequences of this disease – is dangerous, irresponsible, and likely to result in further conflation of what is actually helpful and what is counterproductive,” she said.
The letter writers drew particular attention to one episode, featuring Dr Robert Malone, a 63-year-old US virologist “who was suspended from Twitter for spreading misinformation about Covid”.
It said Dr Malone used his appearance to further promote numerous baseless claims, including several falsehoods about Covid vaccines and an unfounded theory that societal leaders have “hypnotised” the public. It said he was among several of Rogan’s recent guests who compared pandemic policies to the Holocaust.
“These actions are not only objectionable and offensive, but also medically and culturally dangerous,” it said. It added: “This is not only a scientific or medical concern; it is a sociological issue of devastating proportions.”
One British healthcare expert who signed the letter but asked not to be identified in this article, said that like many others, they were fitting in their vaccine activism amid their professional medical work, and juggling life during the pandemic.
“I do the vaccine work in my limited spare time,” they said.
Walter Ian Lipkin, a professor of epidemiology at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University, said: “The Joe Rogan Experience has the largest audience on Spotify.”
Spotify paid Rogan $100m to host his podcast in an exclusive deal that was agreed in 2020. Neither he nor Spotify responded to inquiries from The Independent.
In their letter, the experts concluded: “This is not only a scientific or medical concern; it is a sociological issue of devastating proportions and Spotify is responsible for allowing this activity to thrive on its platform.
“We, the undersigned doctors, nurses, scientists, and educators, thus call on Spotify to immediately establish a clear and public policy to moderate misinformation on its platform.”
Not a lie.
Used the wrong term and corrected it later in the same podcast, as well in several subsequent ones.
Not a lie though a heap of lies about his taking horse-dewormer have been spread about him. Also, helped him feel better within a day.
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Nobody wants to confront the truth about lockdown
As today’s Boris drama will show, three years on from the original decision, we’ve learnt almost nothing
PARLIAMENTARY SKETCHWRITER
Imagine going back in time to January 2020 and explaining to your former self that, within months, going outside would become a matter of public debate, police drones would pursue dog walkers on hillsides, and lawmakers would issue guidance about the correct diameter of a Scotch egg. You’d think it was mad, wouldn’t you?
What if you then told yourself that grieving relatives would be ripped from one another’s arms at funerals while a network of informants busily ratted on their neighbours? You’d probably think a much darker madness had taken hold. When illusions fade away, they can do so in two ways: tragedy and farce. This week marks three years since the first lockdown was imposed and it’s abundantly clear that, during that period, we did our very best to max out the possibilities of both.
The collateral damage of lockdown is all around us; inflation, shattered firms, the impact on children, almost invulnerable to the virus, who were nevertheless denied an education. It also left subtler, yet equally pernicious, legacies. Public support for lockdown became a sort of psychosis, in which millions happily retreated from reality; and some never returned.
What, if anything, have we learnt from all this? Sadly, in terms of profound takeaways, I fear the most lockdown achieved was to shatter our remaining illusions – about ourselves, our beliefs, and our priorities as a society.
During the pandemic, we heard much about “solidarity” – often with the NHS as the unassailable lynchpin. But this had a harsh edge, which made all the clapping and civic-mindedness ring false. It wasn’t just the snitching. Lockdown zealots showed a distinct lack of empathy towards those who might be struggling, or mentally or financially unable to comply. Lockdown critics were smeared, in a way that continues to leave a bad taste for those of us who were on the receiving end of bad faith “Why do you want people to die?” arguments.
It shattered our pretence of rationality, too, as we retreated into superstition. True, this often had a modern, scientific basis, but many of the rituals, from masks outside to almost liturgical sanitation of hands, had as much effect on transmission as spells invoking the protection of imps would have done. Yet still they were followed, with a panicked presumption that a) they would work and b) that, by doing them, one would somehow be shown as a “good person”. The scientific method mutated into “The Science” ™ which stood as pagan totem: its name chanted in invocation, its sacrifices mandatory.
Many of the same logical fallacies remain in rude health. Even now, pro-lockdowners ignore the example of Sweden because its experience of Covid doesn’t fit their mantra – “we had no choice”. Justifications (but not opinions) have shifted with the evidence. When Sweden appeared to be doing badly, it was “because it failed to lock down”. Now the data have moved in Sweden’s favour, it’s because “Sweden had an unofficial lockdown all along”. The Telegraph’s Lockdown Files exposed the self-fulfilling logic behind many decisions. Coercion became its own justification, as when Matt Hancock feared cutting isolation times would dilute the message and “imply we’ve been wrong”. Whether you agree with lockdown or not, this is an appalling way to govern.
Many economic commentators proved remarkably slow to grasp what commonsense onlookers had been saying all along; that spraying money around is bound to lead to inflationary disaster. With a few notable exceptions, such as the Sunday Telegraph’s Liam Halligan and Kate Andrews of the Spectator, most reached the Economist’s view in December 2020: “A surge in inflation looks unlikely.” There were probably face-saving reasons at play here, as well as ignorance. Having argued for “generous” support schemes, some in the economic establishment perhaps had too much skin in the game to take a truly impartial view.
Alongside all this was something more intangible. The change, in many ways, came from ourselves. Public readiness to allow so many basic functions of life – worship, exercise, social interaction – to be dismissed as “non-essential” suggests an inability to bear ordinary risks once inseparable from existence; expectations of a level of “security” unthinkable to previous generations. Even if we never lock down in precisely the same way again, a Rubicon has still been crossed.
So we didn’t finish stronger or more united, we simply ended up with the cold truth that, for many of us, things we claim to value – freedom, the next generation, prosperity, mental wellbeing didn’t really matter that much – at least not enough to fight for. When that becomes clear, there is little left for a society to coalesce around. All that remains are the fragments of those past illusions.
Today, Boris Johnson will appear before the Privileges Committee; revisiting partygate once again. It may spell the end of his political career. Many view his collapse as redolent of Greek tragedy; a man brought low by his own hubris. I view his tragedy slightly differently. Imagine if, rather than ceding to government-by-opinion-poll, he’d stuck to his original liberal instincts on lockdown. Once again Westminster is back in its comfort zone – that of political drama, gripes about hypocrisy and rules being applied evenly. Vital questions risk being lost along the way; about whether those laws were ever justified, and the incalculable damage they caused.
The COVID headbangers are still clinging to lies 
Nearly everything Rogan said has been proved correct. It eats at the lockdown crew.
We all know it was a complete sham.
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There’s still a few headbangers dancing around the totem.
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I find it absolutely fascinating that lads who like to style themselves as being world weary, cynical, not easily fooled etc. are literally the exact opposite when it comes to people who are blatantly corrupt charlatans and frauds like Rogan. And the exact opposite in a general sense too. The most easily fooled, the most trusting of the obvious liar.
It genuinely is a fascinating sociological phenomenon.
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