Eps 16: What is Rogan malware and how to stay away from it
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| Content creation: | GPT-3.5, |
Host
Tracy Bryant
Podcast Content
The dispute reached new heights Wednesday, with the news that Neil Young is pulling his music from Spotify because of concerns over misinformation about COVID-19 on Rogans podcast. Neil Young had his music removed from Spotify last week, after Spotify refused to delete episodes of the "Joe Rogan Experience," which he has criticized for spreading misinformation about the virus. Rogan made headlines worldwide last month when he said he made comments about youth getting the Covid-19 vaccine on his podcast The Joe Rogan Experience.
Joe Rogan has since corrected himself, but has made a few other comments suggesting that young people should not get vaccinated because they are at lower risk for Covid-19. Dr. Anthony Fauci says that they absolutely should be vaccinated, as not only are they at risk of getting Covid-19, but also spreading it to others around them. Among the misleading claims made on this podcast episode is a statement suggesting that those vaccinated after receiving Covid are at greater risk for negative side effects.
I told Joe Rogan that in even the most recent study, the authors concluded by suggesting people who had recovered from the virus should still be getting the vaccine. I shared data with Joe Rogan showing vaccinated people are up to eight times less likely to be infected in the first place, and their viral loads drop off faster if they are actually infected--making them more infectious in the short term, and less likely to spread the virus. The data, as those studies made it clear asymptomatic people could spread the virus, was included in the study published at about the time Malone was interviewed. This probably explains why the most recent study found unvaccinated people already with the virus were more than twice as likely as people who had been also vaccinated.
Vaccines may also help prevent the development of longer-lasting COVID, the chronic illness some people develop after a natural infection, even when their encounters with the acute stage of the infection are minor. Vaccines are especially effective in keeping people from becoming seriously sick or dying. Vaccines are not perfect, but Joe Rogan has to agree that they are definitely a decent tool for helping control the spread of a virus. Later on in his podcast, he brought up the way that people taking meds other than vaccines to help them defend against the virus are made out to look like nuts, but yet he felt that he recovered rapidly using these treatments.
Joe Rogan seemed to agree, then countered with a common misperception of the vaccines general usefulness in addressing Covid. I conceded that the vaccinated might still be carrying the virus with a load comparable to those who were not vaccinated, but added swiftly--before Joe Rogan had time to declare victory--that there was much more to the story. Vaccine scientist Robert Malone had claimed that the Australian coronavirus vaccine trials had turned people into HIV-positive individuals, and that the evidence of that had been suppressed. Podcast host Joe Rogan has also been criticised by public health officials in the past for spreading false information about the Covid-19 vaccine.
This month, a group of over 200 professors and public health officials called for Spotify to clamp down on coronavirus misinformation on Spotify, and pointed to a recent Joe Rogan podcast episode featuring Dr. Robert Malone, an infectious-disease specialist, which included multiple misinformation about the Covid-19 vaccine, according to the experts letter. More than 250 healthcare professionals signed the open letter to Spotify, critiquing its Spotify-exclusive podcast for propagating unfounded COVID-19 conspiracy theories. Just as disinformation is not new because of the pandemic, it is also likely not going away, even if his Spotify-exclusive podcast is removed. His podcast was downloaded over 190 million times in 2019.
Host Joe Rogan claimed that he is downloaded more than 200 million times every month, and is definitely one of the worlds most popular podcasts, topping Spotifys worldwide rankings in 2021. Since the start of the pandemic, Joe Rogan has been a critic of safety measures for COVID-19 in his podcast, one of Spotifys top-rated podcasts. Joe Rogans misreading of the vaccine research from 2015 led Rogan to incorrectly conclude that COVID-19 vaccinations would raise the chances of certain mutations being supervirulent.
Dr. Robert Malone has been banned from Twitter for spreading coronavirus misinformation, and has falsely suggested that millions have been delusioned to believe the vaccine works to prevent severe illness. Read agrees with the overwhelming majority of medical experts that the vaccines are our best weapons against COVID-19. If a health agency such as CDC wants to correct COVID-19 misinformation, they have tofight fire with fire, from an outreach perspective, in order to get heard, says Verywell.