[ad_1]
You would think our culture has evolved beyond turning to the guy who played the role of the electrician in Radio News for medical advice. However, that would be incorrect.
Over the past 18 months, Joe Rogan, the host of a wildly successful podcast Spotify acquired as part of a high-profile deal, has been spreading misinformation about Covid-19 to his nearly 11 million people. listeners per episode, downplaying the effects of the virus, invite guests to promote unproven treatments and dismiss the importance of the vaccine. Yesterday, however, he announced in an Instagram video that he himself had contracted COVID-19. “We immediately threw the kitchen sink in there, all kinds of medicine,” he said in the video, discussing his treatment. As a result, he says in the video, “here we are on Wednesday and I feel great”.
Among the treatments Rogan promoted on his Instagram video were monoclonal antibodies (which Trump received when he contracted Covid), as well as the corticosteroid prednisone. “I feel good. I feel pretty good,” he says in the video. But most media reports of Rogan’s diagnosis of Covid-19 have focused on the fact that he said he had also taken ivermectin.An antiparasitic drug, ivermectin is perhaps best known as a dewormer for horses or dogs (although it is actually prescribed in humans as tablets to treat parasitic infections, or topically to treat conditions like rosacea). Rolling stone has previously reported, in recent months, ivermectin has been heavily promoted by right-wing media figures like Laura Ingraham as a potential treatment for Covid-19, despite the fact that there is little consistent evidence to support its use in this regard ; as a result, people buy the drug in bulk, rave about its effectiveness in private Facebook groups, and complain about its side effects after taking too high a dose (which includes uncontrollable bowel movements). The FDA has warned against taking ivermectin as a treatment for Covid, saying overdoses could lead to side effects such as dizziness, seizures and increased vomiting; and some states have reported that people taking ivermectin overdoses have led to increased calls for poison control.
Arguably, no one has been more successful in promoting ivermectin than Rogan himself. In an April 23 episode of his podcast, the first example found by Rolling stone, he accused Twitter of preventing him from sending a private message that contained a link to a video about the drug, echoing a common right-wing narrative that the media is censoring discussion of any vaccine alternatives. “This doctor used to say that ivermectin is 99% effective in treating Covid, but you don’t hear about it because you can’t finance the vaccines when it’s an effective treatment,” he says on his podcast. “I don’t know if this guy is right or wrong. I’m just asking questions. When asked about the comments, Angelo Carusone, the head of the media monitoring group Media Matters, saw it as another example of his mistrust sowing the vaccine. “IIt’s kind of a flippant way of hitting the vaccines and the larger vaccine narrative, ”he says.
Two months later, on June 22, Rogan welcomed Dr Bret Weinstein and Dr Pierre Kory, both public champions of ivermectin as a Covid-19 treatment. Kory is the founder of the Front Line Covid-19 Critical Care Alliance, an organization that advocates the use of ivermectin in the treatment of Covid-19; After YouTube demonetized its channel for publicly promoting ivermectin, Weinstein moved on to the marginal Odysee platform. In the episode, Weinstein and Kory pushed the claim that the media and government are censoring information about ivermectin in order for Big Pharma to benefit from the Covid-19 vaccine. “You have a drug that’s good enough to end the pandemic at any time,” Weinstein said. “Who decides to prioritize business interests before that? I find it hard to imagine. Clips from the episode circulated widely on YouTube and TikTok, with a video on the latter platform garnering 2.6 million views before being removed for violating TikTok’s guidelines against medical misinformation. “Joe Rogan really hurt us,” Abbie Richards, a disinformation and disinformation researcher who focuses on TikTok, previously said. Rolling stone on the disinformation about ivermectin on the platform.
Rogan’s promotion of ivermectin is integral as he uses his platform to spread disinformation about Covid-19 by featuring guests such as conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, as well as dismissing publicly the importance of collecting a vaccine in April. “If you’re, like, 21 and you’re like, ‘Should I get the shot?’ I’m going to say ‘No’, ”he said in the episode. (He then attempted to clarify his comments, saying he was “not an anti-vaxx person” and a “fucking jerk.”) As Carusone sees it, the fact that he uses his guests to espouse those opinions while s’ often failing to promote them himself, lends him enough cover to avoid being labeled a purveyor of disinformation, Carusone says. Promoting ivermectin as a treatment for its own case of COVID-19 helps reinforce the narrative that it is an effective drug for treating the virus and that there is no harm in trying them. “His audience is huge and they are engaged,” he says. “And they’re already so turned on by the alpha brain that’s the kind of thing they love.”
In response to Rogan’s promotion of ivermectin, some on social media have asked Spotify (which acquired the show exclusively in 2020 as part of a $ 100 million deal) to kick it off the network. , thus limiting its scope. There is some evidence that Rogan’s influence has actually waned since the Spotify deal – a Verge survey last month, for example, indicated that his audience may have waned after he took the plunge. – but he’s still one of the world’s most popular podcasters, who has used his platform to undermine public health. The fear is that [Rogan contracting Covid] going to give him the direct personal experience to talk about how he got Covid, it wasn’t that bad, and they treated him with all the options available, ”he says. “For him, it’s going to end up being a piece of validation.”
[ad_2]
Source link