My Part 1 Review of Joe Rogan and Dr. Sanjay Gupta — COVID-19

•

I was asked to review Dr. Sanjay Gupta's interview with Joe Rogan (Oct 2021). I again listened to over 3 hours of audio; I like Gupta more now, but I'm more frustrated with Rogan and his "I'm looking for truth" attitude. But I did find some good advice from him: Thread time🧵⬇️

As I did with my Rogan-Malone review, I'll start with my takeaway points from the interview. This one was actually harder to review; while they definitely covered many pertinent topics, they bounced around a ton; Gupta (SG) could barely finish a thought. twitter.com/grahamwalker/status/1489429245520580608

1️⃣I associated pre-COVID Rogan with contrarian-but-informed, nuanced-and-controversial opinions. But seeing this interview + Malone's from Dec... Rogan spouts the same beliefs. He's unwilling to hear new evidence or is trapped in an echo chamber where views aren't questioned.

He had MONTHS to review (or to learn about) about vaccine risk. Myocarditis risk. COVID risk. (Remember this is pre-Omicron; I'l do my best to keep my criticisms to what we knew in October, but he brings up many of the same points + Omicron in his Malone interview in December.)

2️⃣JR uses anecdote when it fits his beliefs, and calls upon entirely different beliefs to avoid contradiction. Here he is blaming long-haul COVID on being unhealthy—and then not 3 minutes later explains that an MMA fighter friend has long-haul from too early/too much exercise.

3️⃣Respect for Sanjay Gupta; he does seem more clinically savvy as a doctor than I thought of him as a CNN correspondent. I think he was trying to be affable for Rogan, but I don't think he pressed JR hard enough on nearly *any* topic. Felt like both sides were "sharing opinions"

But Dr. Gupta is *literally* a brain surgeon while JR refers to himself as a comedian. Rogan is not dumb, but come on—comedians don't get to argue facts with a doctor who clearly did research for this interview and is one of the most well-known physicians in the world.

4️⃣I agree with SG and JR: I think JR is very authentic and he would have had this same conversation over dinner with SG. But because it's just "a conversation," there's no deep dives into any. single. topic. in this 3 hour interview. If Gupta was there to debate or discuss...

He didn't have the chance to. JR says his incorrect bit several times about myocarditis risk, Gupta tries to politely correct him, and before they can dive further, Rogan has changed the subject. Gupta PULLS OUT A JOURNAL ARTICLE at one point, and Joe has already moved on.

I'm not sure if Rogan lacks the attention span or interest in a deep dive on any of his topics he is entirely misinformed about—or maybe they're just too boring to read—but that's the thing about science and medicine: a lot of it *is* boring for most people. That's science!🧪

(Example: for just the topic of "natural immunity"—the topic that where Rogan's arguments may hold a bit of water—I've read at least 15 articles and talked to several immunology experts.) 👉YOU CANNOT READ A NEWS ARTICLE ABOUT A SCIENTIFIC PAPER AND HAVE AN *INFORMED* OPINION.

5️⃣As I said in my Malone review: JR almost never brings up COVID deaths. Most of his time is spent on—by his own admission—extremely rare vaccine outcomes. In addition, it's strange that Rogan constantly interrupts Gupta, when he let Malone ramble conspiracy on and on.

6️⃣Finally, Rogan reveals that he thinks we should all just get COVID (and maybe a vaccine). Like I said, I'll cover natural immunity—but you don't get to just say "Let's all get COVID" without acknowledging all the death and long COVID that will happen with that strategy.

Okay now onto the meat and potatoes. Myocarditis. I've already covered this exhaustively (multiple links below) but I'll address a few of the added points from this interview. First: it's clear that Rogan understands the basics of risk. Rogan's biggest concern is THE CHILDREN!

But he does NOT understand an extremely rare event vs an EXTREMELY EXTREMELY rare event. Would you rather a child have 450 in-a-million chance of being struck by lightning, or a 67-in-a-million chance of getting shocked by an electrical outlet? (COVID myocarditis vs vaccine myo).

Finally, Rogan brings up the devastating, sad death of Simone Scott, a 19yo journalism major who developed myocarditis 10 days after her second Moderna vaccine. Her death has no other words besides tragic. JR refers to it frequently on the podcast. dailynorthwestern.com/2021/06/12/campus/medill-freshman-simone-scott-dies-from-pneumonia-complications/

But why is her death tragic, and no others? What of the thousands of young healthy people who died of *COVID* myocarditis? Why does Rogan not mention their names or tell their stories? Need anecotes? Amazing ER doctor @Cleavon_MD memorializes them. twitter.com/search?q=from%3A%40Cleavon_MD%20myocarditis

Multiple debunks of the Guardian article that Rogan cites (and mis-cites) repeatedly bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n2251 sciencebasedmedicine.org/peer-review-of-a-vaers-dumpster-dive/ sciencebasedmedicine.org/vaers-preprint-debacle/ My myocarditis thread: twitter.com/grahamwalker/status/1489617388785987585

Remember flatten the curve? Not JR. Gupta focuses on the COVID contagiousness and spreading of vaccinated vs unvaccinated people, but there's a much bigger risk that we've already seen: over-filled hospitals; people dying of preventable illness because hospitals are overwhelmed.

Never in my life would I imagine anyone—let alone a 46yo Purple Heart veteran—dying of gallstone pancreatitis, caused by a stone blocking the pancreas. It is a relatively easy to diagnose condition but needs a GI specialist to remove the stone. nydailynews.com/coronavirus/ny-covid-veteran-dies-gallstone-covid-crowding-houston-texas-20210827-g4nl2q6ihbgdhkf3cu2yj3x2ly-story.html

I know ER doctors who've spent the past two years of surges calling other STATES to try to find beds for their critically ill patients with strokes, internal bleeding, deadly infections, heart attacks, kidney failure—because hospitals were filled with COVID patients.

(Not to mention the hell that we've been through in the past two years, to the point that healthcare workers are now blamed, threatened or attacked for "killing" a COVID+ loved one. And now we've lost 20% of HCWs because of the stress.) theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/11/the-mass-exodus-of-americas-health-care-workers/620713/

An hour in, the two are back to *debating a news article* about myocarditis. Not the study, nor the study abstract. A news article. Gupta, so fed up, pulls out his bag and shows Rogan data on a piece of paper about myocarditis. (Classic doctor move. I would have done the same.)

But we can't even finish the myocarditis discussion, because now we've jumped to a theory that Rogan wants to talk about: not aspirating (pulling back on) a syringe before an injection. This is despite the fact that a) the deltoid lacks large blood vessels (why we use it)

b)Multiple articles — from 2014 and 2015 so they cannot be lumped into COVID conspiracy — reviewed aspiration and found it to be unnecessary pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25871949/ ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/pmc/articles/PMC5333604/ cdc.gov/vaccines/hcp/acip-recs/general-recs/administration.html c) The needle used is 0.7mm in diameter (22 gauge)

d)If you're going to aspirate, you're technically supposed to do it for 5-10sec which no one does because it causes much more pain (and squirming) to have a needle in an arm for that much longer! e) Rogan doesn't know anyone who has had aspiration first... where's the danger?

I have two final points for this thread. First, Rogan (of course) goes into ivermectin. First: I will 💯 agree with him: CNN calling it "horse dewormer" and the FDA snarking with the below tweet did not help things. Those were cheap shots and petty... twitter.com/us_fda/status/1429050070243192839?lang=en

And hurt trust with people already skeptical of the medical system. Ivermectin *is* a drug approved for human use. FOR PARASITES, not viruses. Its discovery won the Nobel Prize. FOR PARASITES, not viruses. I have even prescribed it. FOR PARASITES, not viruses.

And if you think IVM stopped COVID in Uttar Pradesh, India (a common rumor), look no further than this Youtube clip of a lecture by @nickmmark youtube.com/watch?v=d17pAo6S2MU&t=1443s or this devastating article this week showing mortality 43x higher than reported in UP. article-14.com/post/untitled-60cf605395758

(Finally, Rogan brings up his COVID infection, reports taking ivermectin, azithromycin, steroids, even getting monoclonal antibodies—where is his concern about this rushed, untested treatment or its long term risks???) instagram.com/tv/CTSsA8wAR2-/

The last thing I'll bring up today is where I agree with *both* Joe Rogan and Dr. Gupta: The drug companies. Most doctors I know have really mixed feelings for all the reasons that Rogan alludes to in this clip. We need them/they need us/we are...suspicious of their motivations.

My mind was *not* made up about the vaccines until I'd read the data—several times—myself, and asked several colleagues as well. Every doctor I know with kids did the same when the data came out for pediatrics. Dr. Gupta says the exact same thing. "Kinda trust"... but verify.

ER doctors like myself were first in line to get vaccinated, and I excitedly signed up as soon as I could. But any doctor who tells you they weren't just the teensy-tiniest bit nervous about this new mRNA vaccine technology is lying. It's human nature to fear the unknown!

And yet: we trusted science, the research, AND we did a risk-benefit analysis, just like JR talks about. We knew the risks of COVID and a bit of long COVID, and we knew about rare vaccine risks. We took the shot to protect ourselves/our families/our patients. Thanks for reading.