A Joe Rogan Guest (Kind Of Shockingly) Called Him Out On One Of His Latest Bullsh*t Claims About The COVID Vaccines

In a rather monumental first, an actual SCIENTIFIC JOURNAL! made an appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience, and we have Australian radio personality Josh Szeps to thank for it. On the latest episode of the unfathomably popular podcast, the topic turned to COVID vaccines—something Rogan, who has admitted that he’s as dumb as a bag of hammers, is staunchly against. Why? Well, to hear Rogan tell it, it’s partly because of the many risks he claims are associated with it, reports Mediaite.

According to Rogan, the vaccines are particularly dangerous to young boys, because they can cause myocarditis, a dangerous inflammation of the heart muscle. “There’s like a two- to fourfold increase in the instances of myocarditis versus hospitalization,” Rogan said, but Szeps wasn’t buying it. “You know that there’s an increased risk in myocarditis among that age cohort from getting COVID as well—which exceeds the risk of myocarditis from the vaccine,” he replied. But Rogan didn’t think that was true, and told Szeps as much. Fortunately, Szeps brought receipts.

The podcast’s producers managed to track down an article from New Scientist, which is plainly titled “Myocarditis Is More Common After Covid-19 Infection Than Vaccination.”

“‘[Males aged] 12 to 17, were [most] likely to develop myocarditis within three months of catching COVID at a rate of 450 cases per million infections,’” Rogan read from the article. “‘This compares to 67 cases of myocarditis per million of the same age following their second dose of Pfizer.’” (His repeated attempts to say myocarditis without stumbling are hilarious, by the way.)

“Yeah, so you’re about eight times likelier to get myocarditis from getting COVID than from getting it from the vaccine,” Szeps explained.

“That’s interesting,” Rogan replied. “That is not what I’ve read before. But also, it’s like, even when we’re reading these things, it’s like, where are we getting this from?”

While it’s easier to imagine Rogan reading the nutritional panel on his energy drink can than it is picturing him reclining by a roaring fire with a glass of unpronounceable scotch and the latest copy of Frontiers in Neuroscience, even he seemed to know this wasn’t an argument he was going to win.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, Rogan—given his estimated audience of 11 million listeners per podcast episode—has been one of the loudest and most prominent anti-vaccine voices people have heard. Which has worried medical professionals enough that, just this week, more than 250 doctors banded together to send an open letter to Spotify, calling on the company “to take action against the mass-misinformation events which continue to occur on its platform” by implementing a misinformation policy. So far, Spotify has yet to respond.

UPDATE: Rogan took to Twitter to address this moment on his show, blaming the “cringey” incident on him deciding to “wing it,” which kind of exactly the problem many people have with Joe Rogan and his podcast. Might not be a good idea to “wing it” when it comes to medicine and science?

(Via Mediaite)