The Wuhan virus—how are we doing? - Page 149 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#15194653
Unthinking Majority wrote:Sanjay admits several times in the video that CNN shouldn't have said what they did by framing it as a "horse dewormer". It's a human drug that's also used in larger doses in horses.

Ivermectin is an anti-parasite drug that hundreds of millions if not billions of people have taken on doctor prescriptions. The scientists who discovered it won a Nobel Prize for it in human use against parasites like roundworm. It has anti-inflammatory properties so it is also used to treat people with rosecea, and these properties are being studied in use vs COVID. It is also used in horses for parasites. Rogan says it was prescribed to him by his doctor. It hasn't been approved yet by FDA for treatment of COVID, there's trials going on. Here's from a medical journal study from July/Aug 2021, it has some antiviral/anti-inflammatory properties that can possibly be effective against COVID:

https://journals.lww.com/americantherap ... _of.7.aspx


Here's another: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8088823/


The FDA does not approve of its use yet, it says trials are still ongoing. Here on its website (https://www.fda.gov/consumers/consumer- ... t-covid-19) the FDA points to a link to these ongoing trials, the first they link to has since been completed, and the study concludes:


https://www.clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show ... w=2&rank=1


I think this is a nothing berger. The reason why news networks were announcing people were getting horse meds is because they were actually doing so. Also, on numerous occasions I saw them making emphasis that both human and animal formulations exist.
This idiot should not act offended when he publicly does something that is stupid and he gets called for doing so. Gupta was awfully polite. He should have told him... stick to the entertainment part, stop trying to influence people on the medical part, legitimizing conspiracy theories is not productive.
#15194657
XogGyux wrote:I think this is a nothing berger. The reason why news networks were announcing people were getting horse meds is because they were actually doing so. Also, on numerous occasions I saw them making emphasis that both human and animal formulations exist.

Well didn't seem CNN was doing that, at least on some occasions. Human drugs that they also give to horses is not "horse meds", and it's dishonest for CNN to frame it like that. It's dishonest manipulation. This is a news organization FFS. Did you read anything I wrote? Here's what you say if you're a legit news org: "this medication is still in the trial stages for its effectiveness against COVID and is not recommended by the FDA for COVID treatment. Follow your doctor's recommendations, including getting vaccinated."
#15194662
Unthinking Majority wrote:Well didn't seem CNN was doing that, at least on some occasions. Human drugs that they also give to horses is not "horse meds", and it's dishonest for CNN to frame it like that. It's dishonest manipulation. This is a news organization FFS. Did you read anything I wrote? Here's what you say if you're a legit news org: "this medication is still in the trial stages for its effectiveness against COVID and is not recommended by the FDA for COVID treatment. Follow your doctor's recommendations, including getting vaccinated."

No it is not, when people are obtaining the drugs from their local veterinary it is not wrong to make it clear on your public service announcement that these drugs intended for animals are not safe for human.
Let me tell you something else. Parasitic infections in humans in the US are not awfully common. Since I graduated from med school I have never been prescribed an anti-parasitic and I practice in Florida where we do see tropical diseases from time to time.
When you check the FDA website here:
fda.gov/consumers/consumer-updates/why-you-should-not-use-ivermectin-treat-or-prevent-covid-19
Ivermectin tablets are approved by the FDA to treat people with intestinal strongyloidiasis and onchocerciasis, two conditions caused by parasitic worms.

This is the geographic distribution of onchocerciasis:
https://www.who.int/images/default-sour ... 7f1011c2_4
Strongyloides might be a bit more common in certain areas/populations, immunocompromised people, but it is certainly not something that we see commonly at all, like I have said, in several years of practice I have never have a patient with it nor have I had to prescribe ivermectin.
There is also some other approval which is for headlice. I don't deal with headlice. Probably my pediatric colleagues have used the TOPICAL version of this medication for that, I am not sure.
All of this to say, that if you have a bunch of people acquiring this medication from their local vets and ending up in their local ER with side effects, it is not unexpected that the news are going to be reacting how they did. Specially when from a sensationalist perspective "idiot ends in the ICU after taking 4 horse pills" seems more attractive than "patient ended up in the ICU after taking 4 pills that sometimes are prescribed to humans as well as livestock".
I am not saying that CNN is completely off the hook. All I am saying is that this idiot does not have the moral ground when he skips the safe vaccines, gives a large forum for "stupid skepticism", goes out of his way to get a non-FDA approved drug, and then brags to all his followers that it was the ivermectin.... rather than everything else (or perhaps more likely, the fact that most people simply get better on their own regardless). In short, nozingberger.
#15194664
XogGyux wrote:No it is not, when people are obtaining the drugs from their local veterinary it is not wrong to make it clear on your public service announcement that these drugs intended for animals are not safe for human.


Rogan said he got it from a doctor, on the advice from multiple doctors, not a vet. There's no evidence to say he took the dose meant for animals rather than the human dosage.

All of this to say, that if you have a bunch of people acquiring this medication from their local vets and ending up in their local ER with side effects, it is not unexpected that the news are going to be reacting how they did.

Specially when from a sensationalist perspective "idiot ends in the ICU after taking 4 horse pills" seems more attractive than "patient ended up in the ICU after taking 4 pills that sometimes are prescribed to humans as well as livestock".


There's no evidence to say he took horse pills. If you're taking horse pills from a vet at horse-sized doses yeah you're an idiot.

I am not saying that CNN is completely off the hook. All I am saying is that this idiot does not have the moral ground when he skips the safe vaccines, gives a large forum for "stupid skepticism", goes out of his way to get a non-FDA approved drug, and then brags to all his followers that it was the ivermectin.... rather than everything else (or perhaps more likely, the fact that most people simply get better on their own regardless). In short, nozingberger.


Well i'm not letting Rogan totally off the hook either. He should have just got the vaccine. But there's many trial studies showing ivermectin is effective against COVID, and there's no evidence for or against that Rogan was or wasn't helped by the drug. If the trials keep showing promising results we could see it approved for some kind of COVID use by the FDA and/or WHO within the next year or so, possibly sooner. The studies say ivermectin is safe for human use anyways, so its not like he was doing himself harm by taking it.

I don't think he did any harm to himself, besides the moderate risk of not taking the vaccine before he got COVID, but the optics look bad because you have someone who says they didn't take the vaccine and used this other non-FDA drug to help him recover, which could lead others to do the same, when in reality the best thing to do seems to be to get just get the vaccine in the first place, and that's on Rogan. But because of this some in the media are out to discredit Rogan so other people don't do the same. Not to mention people on the left generally dislike Rogan. CNN can warn others about his methods not being FDA approved (rightfully so), but CNN didn't just do that, they purposefully manipulated the narrative. Not any different than what @SpecialOlympian posted after I posted the video. Dr. Gupta admitted it on his show: CNN shouldn't have said what they said.

These are the kinds of lies and manipulation that make Trump and his supporters distrust the media and call CNN "fake news". It's also what makes people not trust them when they tell them to take vaccines, or even that Biden rightfully won the election. These people are paranoid, often wrongly, but I don't blame the paranoia because we're all constantly being lied to by the media and the government. Thankfully I still trust my doctor and am fully vaccinated.
#15194668
Unthinking Majority wrote:Rogan said he got it from a doctor, on the advice from multiple doctors, not a vet. There's no evidence to say he took the dose meant for animals rather than the human dosage.

I have no doubt that he took the stuff for humans. A person with his resources is not likely to be pulling to the curb of Petsmart (or wherever you can buy that stuff) to buy horse ivermectin. On the other hand, I am sure that with the right contacts/money he can find a doctor that would prescribe him cactus juice enemas for COVID if that is what he is requesting.
I don't watch CNN all the time, so I don't know what words were used and/or what in particular pissed off this guy that CNN said. The context is important. Saying "podcast host takes horse pills" is different from "podcast host takes medication that is also used for horse parasites". And again, the reporters don't have medical training so they might not necessarily know the difference, etc.
However, at the end of the day.... the point is... If you don't take what is ACTUALLY recommended by the scientific community. If you are constantly introducing doubts, and or raising the posibility of conspiracy theories (even if he does not positively endorses them), if you go out of your way to get something that is NOT APPROVED but not just that, the FDA has issued WARNINGS againsts is use... and then you brag about it on media... I don't think you have the moral authority to complain when CNN screws up and miss reports "podcast host takes horse pills" vs "podcast host takes meds that have also been used to treat parasites on horses". You simply don't have much to stand on. Again. Nothingburger.

Well i'm not letting Rogan totally off the hook either. He should have just got the vaccine. But there's many trial studies showing ivermectin is effective against COVID, and there's no evidence for or against that Rogan was or wasn't helped by the drug. If the trials keep showing promising results we could see it approved for some kind of COVID use by the FDA and/or WHO within the next year or so, possibly sooner.

Please do link those studies.
Here is a meta-analysis (analysis of multiple ramdomized controlled trials).
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articl ... 015017.pdf
And the conclusion of the authors:
Based on the current very low- to low-certainty evidence, we are uncertain about the efficacy and safety of ivermectin used to treat or prevent COVID-19. The completed studies are small and few are considered high quality. Several studies are underway that may produce clearer answers in review updates. Overall, the reliable evidence available does not support the use ivermectin for treatment or prevention of COVID-19 outside of well-designed randomized trials.

Uptodate is a resource used worldwide by physicians, the articles are edited by the experts of their fields and everything there have multiple sources to studies... they don't recomend its use.
FDA don't recommend its use.
It is bonkers that we are still discussing this nonsense. At this point in time, there is ZERO evidence to support its use for COVID 19. ZERO. ZIP. Nothing. A doctor prescribing this nonsense to a patient with the current available data is committing malpractice. A doctor that prescribes amphetamines for weight loss to an obese patient that is not exercising or dieting is committing malpractice. Likewise, a doctor prescribing ivermectin for a patient that is not vaccinated is also a form of malpractice....

so its not like he was doing himself harm by taking it.

Safe is a relative term. In medicine we use risks vs benefits. There is NO drug that does not have risks. There is no drug that is perfectly safe. Some of the most benign drugs that I know of... tylenol? You can have fulminant liver damage and need urgent transplant/die if you take too much. Aspirin.... you can have bleedings, including ulcers in your stomach with significant bleedings, you can have hemorrhagic strokes and die. Anti-acid medications such as nexium can cause bone mineral loss and osteoporosis, they can also kidney damage. Tums overdose can cause severe hypercalcemia that can lead to seizures and death. Vitamns... Vitamin A toxicity can make your brain swell, Vitamin D toxicity can make you re-absorb lots of calcium and cause hypercalcemia which can lead to nausea, vomiting, dehydration, altered consciousness, seizures, death.
Doctors do their best to minimize patients to drugs of any kind. We should always asks ourselves "Why am I prescribing this" rather than "Why not prescribe this". The default answer should be to NOT prescribe something unless you are expecting the BENEFITS to outweigh the risks. Since all meds have risks... the MINIMUM that a medication should have to justify its prescriptioin is some expectation of benefit.
There is no expectation of the benefit of using Ivermectin for COVID 19.

CNN can warn others about his methods not being FDA approved (rightfully so), but CNN didn't just do that, they purposefully manipulated the narrative.

Again, context do matter. This is being reported with the background of the FDA announcing that people are going nuts putting animal shit in their bodies and poison control getting increasing calls. I have not seen every possible clip in which CNN has addressed the issue, nor do I care for it because I think it is largely inconsequential for what I have said earlier.

These are the kinds of lies and manipulation that make Trump and his supporters distrust the media and call CNN "fake news".

Doubtful.
#15194678
XogGyux wrote:Please do link those studies.

Well as I suspected you didn't read my post that you quoted and were originally responding to, which has made this a difficult conversation to have.

Here's my post again with the studies linked:
viewtopic.php?p=15194645#p15194645

Thanks for the study of studies. My goal here isn't to defend the use of this drug, because at the end of the day it's not FDA approved. My goal is to chastise CNN for manipulating the narrative, and I quite enjoyed Rogan rightfully cornering Dr. Gupta and putting him on the spot to comment on his crappy news outlet, which has become almost as bad as FOX News in recent years. To Gupta's credit he agreed with Rogan on the manipulation and didn't defend his colleagues.

Here is CNN, labeling it as a horse dewormer and the guest needs to correct them.

#15194680
Unthinking Majority wrote:Here is CNN, labeling it as a horse dewormer and the guest needs to correct them.


Anderson Cooper:
"One of the drug he said he use is a drug more often used to deworm horses"
Like I said, the exact words and/the context in which those words are uttered matter.

Then the bald guy says this is horse meds and does not clarify it is also used on people. But you can also see his reaction when the Doctor talks that this med is also used in humans for scabies around 3:30 and you can see his expression of surprise. It seems quite obvious that the bald guy didn't know it was also a human med :lol: .
Again. I think this is a big nothingburger. The bald guy is not a doctor, I am not expecting him to know all the uses of ivermectin, they are reporting that a whole bunch of people are taking this crap and ending up in hospitals from taking high doses from veterinary sources. Also, this is not a common drug. I promess you, Dr. Wen had to brush up her knowledge on this drug prior to offer her opionions. Several months after this ivermectin craze now everyone seems to be an expert. But understand this, Dr. Wen is an emergency medicine trained physician, this is NOT a drug prescribed by ER physicians, most of them have never prescribed this thing and will never prescribe it in their careers.
Grasping straws about what is far more likely a combination of misunderstandings. This is not much of an excuse. However, Rogan definitely does not have the moral high ground on this issue.
#15194688
Unthinking Majority wrote:Sanjay admits several times in the video that CNN shouldn't have said what they did by framing it as a "horse dewormer". It's a human drug that's also used in larger doses in horses.

Ivermectin is an anti-parasite drug that hundreds of millions if not billions of people have taken on doctor prescriptions. The scientists who discovered it won a Nobel Prize for it in human use against parasites like roundworm. It has anti-inflammatory properties so it is also used to treat people with rosecea, and these properties are being studied in use vs COVID. It is also used in horses for parasites. Rogan says it was prescribed to him by his doctor. It hasn't been approved yet by FDA for treatment of COVID, there's trials going on. Here's from a medical journal study from July/Aug 2021, it has some antiviral/anti-inflammatory properties that can possibly be effective against COVID:


So how much horse paste did you eat today?

Here is the narrative: Joe Rogan is rich enough to get anything he wants from his doctor, and basically told said doctor to "give me everything" because he's a moron. Ivermectin does nothing for COVID and is only being shilled by rightwing grifters who don't care if their audience members live or die.

The only reason Rogan cares about some dumb comment on CNN that neither he nor any of his pothead weightlifter audience watched is because he is personally offended by it, which prompted him to give more pushback to his guest than any other subject he has ever presented. Which, as I have stated before, included giving a platform to millions so his guests could deny that HIV causes AIDS and allow Gavin McInnes to brag about how people in his fun boy's club commit fascist acts of violence, and that said acts of violence are required to advance. So it's really, really funny when Rogan, of all the possible assholes who could be saying this, goes around telling people that they're not using their platform responsibly.

To put this in perspective, Joe Rogan has used his platform to legitimize his personal friend Alex Jones and present him as a "crazy, but smart and right" guy to his audience. So I'm not really inclined to think his point is salient, relevant, or coming from a place of intellectual honesty.

Joe Rogan is angry because he crams apple flavored horse paste up his butt and he needs people to tell him how smart he is for it. Nobody should care about how CNN describes Ivermectin because nobody should be talking about it in the first place. The few studies that proved it had any great efficacy turned out to be completely fraudulent.

Xogux wrote:I have no doubt that he took the stuff for humans. A person with his resources is not likely to be pulling to the curb of Petsmart (or wherever you can buy that stuff) to buy horse ivermectin.


You go to where anyone gets good, apple flavored medicine: Tractor Supply Co.
#15194716
Dear Commercial Media Wisemen:


My 93-year-old grandfather just came down with a runny nose after watching 48 hours of TV.

Question: Should I run out into the street and denounce the first non-vaxxed person I see?

I really want to help stop the pandemic because I'm others-centric.


- Perplexed in Pasadena
#15194768
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Hey, I'm not only not skipping a week, I'm on time! So here's the weekly numbers:

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The good news is that the rolling 7-day average of new cases and deaths reported daily to the CDC continues to drop. If Biden* doesn't hurry, by the time his administration* actually releases the threatened inoculation mandate it'll be over.

annatar1914 wrote:@Doug64 , you created a narrative thusly, saying with a hypothetical conversation that;

    "The Wuhan virus is dangerous! You have to alter your daily behavior in order to protect me."
    "For the large majority, inoculations are both safe and reduce the danger of the Wuhan virus to no more than the flu. Have you been inoculated?"
    "Uh ... no...."
    "Do you have a medical condition that would make the inoculation dangerous?"
    "Uh ... no...."
    "Get inoculated and we'll talk."

Sure. It doesn't include everyone else.

Agreed, so just what is the percentage of those refusing to get inoculated that are doing so out of health issues that increase the risk that the inoculation could kill them, and how many are healthy people simply choosing not to risk it? For any cost/benefit analysis, that number is important and I have no idea what it is.

Doug64 wrote:On average, the flu kills between 12,000 and 60,000 people every year, more of them children than die from the Wuhan virus. Should we insist that masks now become standard for everyone--including all children--every flu season? 30,000 to 40,000 people are killed in vehicular accidents every year. Should we ban private ownership of motor vehicles by requiring everyone that can't justify (or buy) an exemption to use public transport? Like I've been saying, cost/benefit analysis with personal responsibility factored into the costs.

annatar1914 wrote:These are hypotheticals based on a socio-economic arrangement which I don't believe in anyway. I might not be the Statist i used to have been, but a better arrangement than the free-for-all you suggest would have the merit of not collapsing society altogether, I am thinking.

We all evolve over time, I'm not the hardcore Libertarian I used to be. But you're going to need to explain that better. For instance, for the question of requiring children in schools to mask up, the death rate we are willing to accept without similar requirements for the flu season is certainly relevant.

Doug64 wrote:And your mother and her siblings would rightfully have the same fears even if everyone was forcibly inoculated and required to wear masks anyway--the masks most people are wearing are almost useless at preventing the spread of the virus for anything but cursory contact and the "vaccines" appear to not really be vaccines at all but rather palliatives, while the CDC ignores how natural immunity appears to both be as effective in preventing reinfection and superior at preventing further spread of the virus and the Biden administration acts to hinder the availability of other palliatives to states that need them.

annatar1914 wrote:All three of your retorts are questionable, at best, in themselves.

How so?

Doug64 wrote:Here's another "ripple in a pond," a young woman murdered by her government. >: She was young and healthy and so felt she didn't need to risk inoculation, but the government kept piling on more and more costs for her decision not to risk it. So finally she broke down and got inoculated, and now she'd dead thanks to other people's selfishness. From her obituary:

    Jessica's greatest passion was to be the best mother possible for Bridget and Clara. Nothing would stand in her way to be present in their lives. During the last weeks of her life, however, the world turned dark with heavy-handed vaccine mandates. Local and state governments were determined to strip away her right to consult her wisdom and enjoy her freedom. She had been vehemently opposed to taking the vaccine, knowing she was in good health and of a young age and thus not at risk for serious illness. In her mind, the known and unknown risks of the unproven vaccine were more of a threat. But, slowly, day by day, her freedom to choose was stripped away. Her passion to be actively involved in her children's education—which included being a Room Mom—was, once again, blocked by government mandate. Ultimately, those who closed doors and separated mothers from their children prevailed. It cost Jessica her life. It cost her children the loving embrace of their caring mother. And it cost her husband the sacred love of his devoted wife. It cost God's Kingdom on earth a very special soul who was just making her love felt in the hearts of so many.

Twitter labeled a tweet sharing the obituary "misleading" and would not allow it to be shared or interacted with, despite county health officials confirming that the "vaccine" was the cause of death.

annatar1914 wrote:And yet, earlier you have remarked about limits to mitigating risk...

There's a difference between choosing whether to risk your life and having the government force you to do so. Now, as I've said, I'm no longer the Libertarian I used to be, and one example is the draft: hardcore Libertarians oppose the draft on principle, arguing that the government has no right to force you to fight and maybe die for a cause you don't believe in, I've come around to the position that fighting and maybe dying for your country is an inherent aspect of citizenship--one of the responsibilities that balances out the rights that citizenship brings. So I could see an argument for forced vaccinations when the price of not doing so is high enough--polio, for example, or measles. But again, I need numbers for that judgment call--how effective are the vaccines really? How do those numbers compare to natural immunity? What level of risk are we talking about for taking the vaccines? What is the level of risk for not taking the vaccines? I suppose what it comes down to is, how many people like Jessica are you willing to kill so that your mother can feel comfortable visiting her siblings?

And nore generally, that Rogan/Gupta interview? There was more to it than just ivormectin:

What the Gupta–Rogan COVID Conversation Revealed
This week Joe Rogan, the extremely popular and sometimes controversial podcast host, invited Dr. Sanjay Gupta, chief medical correspondent for CNN, on his show. The dichotomy was fascinating to behold. After all, Rogan is the definition of what journalism hates today — a freelancer outside the editorial control of old media — and Gupta the epitome of medical journalism in America today. But surprisingly (or maybe not, for those of us familiar with Rogan and Gupta), this was one of the most productive conversations to have been conducted in this country since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic.

You would be hard pressed to come up with another instance of a representative of a major news outlet appearing on a podcast or non-mainstream outlet the way Gupta did, traveling to Austin to sit across the table from Rogan. As Gupta himself said, many of his friends advised him not to do it. And yet what resulted was a rare moment of bipartisan discussion — calm, rational, and cordial.

Rogan has been one of the leading voices of skepticism regarding COVID. He isn’t an anti-vaxxer per se, but he questions its value for healthy adults and children. Gupta, on the other hand, is one of the standard-bearers of traditional medical expertise in this country — he was even considered for the post of surgeon general at one point.

As the discussion began, Gupta correctly pointed out that one of the most worrisome side effects of the COVID vaccines, myocarditis in the young (predominantly young males between the ages of eight and 19), occurs at a rate of 0.8 per million people after the first dose; after the second dose, the number jumps to 5.8 per million. This is an extremely low rate, but the side effect is indeed likely correlated with the vaccine. Gupta then presented the key finding, which many people (including Rogan) don’t realize: The rate of myocarditis in children who have COVID is much higher — about 16 times higher, in fact. That is still fewer than 100 out of every million children, but the risk of myocarditis clearly is higher with the disease than with the vaccine.

Trying to make the case for universal vaccination, Gupta explained that, among all patients, a person vaccinated for COVID is eight times less likely to acquire the virus in the community than someone who is unvaccinated or otherwise not immune (meaning they didn’t gain immunity from being infected with the virus). Additionally, vaccinated people who get breakthrough infections remain infectious for a much shorter period than those who are unvaccinated. As time goes on, the vaccine’s immunity appears to drop across the board, which is one reason why the government is now recommending boosters. Furthermore, approximately 95 percent of people hospitalized with COVID over the past six months were unvaccinated.

The vaccine quite clearly reduces your likelihood of getting infected and, if infected, of getting sick enough to require hospitalization; and it dramatically reduces your risk of death from the disease. That is about as successful as one can hope.

Rogan, like many who remain skeptical of mainstream medicine’s recommendations, doesn’t appear to realize that, although children are at far less risk than adults, the risk to children of long-term sequelae from COVID — “long-haul” COVID — is ten to 20 times greater than the long-term risks of the vaccine.

And this gets back to the key problem with much of the discussion over the pandemic since early 2020: We are terrible at both understanding and communicating the concept of risk.

If Gupta failed at all in this discussion, it was in not clearly communicating the risks for some of the more complicated scenarios that Rogan presented to him. For example, Rogan asked whether the risk of vaccinating children is a greater or lesser risk than getting COVID. With the data we have today, we know that the risk of dying from COVID is far less for an unvaccinated child than for a vaccinated person over age 70. However, the data also clearly show that the risk for children of death from COVID is far greater than for children from getting the vaccine, by a factor of ten to 20.

Rogan brought up a study by four researchers suggesting that post-vaccination myocarditis resulted in more hospitalizations in boys under the age of 17 than did COVID infections. Although Rogan understood the headline correctly, what he didn’t understand are the multiple caveats that the authors offered in the discussion section of the paper. First, in comparing hospitalization from myocarditis with that from COVID infections, they were comparing two very different cohorts of patients. Second, they themselves admit that they are not sure about the correlation and that further study is needed.

Additionally, indications for testing for myocarditis once a child is admitted to the hospital is not the same as testing for it in outpatients. This apples-to-oranges comparison complicates Rogan’s understanding of this study. The take-home point is this: The risk of myocarditis is many, many times greater with COVID infection than that caused by side effects after taking the vaccine.

Rogan doesn’t seem to understand that nuance, and he doesn’t seem to understand the risk/benefit in this case. A CDC study lays out the direct comparison of myocarditis from COVID and myocarditis from the vaccine:

In recent months, there has been concern about a small risk of myocarditis after receiving an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine. A June study showed among males ages 12–29 years — the group with the highest rates of myocarditis after vaccination — there would be an estimated 39 to 47 cases of myocarditis for every million second doses of vaccine. Authors of the new study say their findings support health officials’ assertions that the benefits of vaccination outweigh the risks.

But ultimately, the science is not, and never has been, the biggest problem in this debate. The crux of the problem is and always has been our failure to properly communicate.

From the very beginning of the pandemic, health experts have given conflicting recommendations, illogical assertions, and often downright incorrect information. When experts have had to change their recommendations based on new evidence, they have seemed reluctant to admit that they were in error in the first place. For the public, the public-health authorities’ shifting opinions and advice, backtracking, and outright contradictions undermined their credibility.

The federal messaging on booster shots is just the latest example of confusion. In his conversation with Rogan, Gupta described how the White House announced vaccine boosters long before the FDA or CDC had come to any conclusions on the matter. It seems clear that the White House didn’t have the data on which to base their announcement, making an end run around scientists for political reasons.

Despite the political pressure, the FDA and CDC have been slow and meticulous in their approach to the booster shots. Gupta correctly says that booster policy should have been led by the scientists and not the politicians, a mistake that undermined the messaging to the public.

Rogan repeatedly asked Gupta what data support claims of the vaccination’s immediate benefits and what we know about possible long-term effects of the vaccine. But the latter is impossible to know; the novel coronavirus is, after all, novel. Long-term effects can’t be determined until we have a longer term to study. But as for short-term vaccine effects, the data are quite clear. We have more data on this therapeutic than any other drug in human history. With literally billions of doses having been administered, the side-effect profile compares very favorably with that of many other commonly used drugs.

Rogan was at his strongest in the discussion when he brought up the news coverage by CNN of his recent COVID infection and his decision to take the antiparasitic drug ivermectin, which has both human and veterinary uses. CNN (as well as other mainstream news outlets) attacked Rogan for taking a “horse dewormer”:

“It’s a lie on a news network. . . . That’s a lie that they’re conscious of. It’s not a mistake,” Rogan said to Gupta as the longtime medical analyst appeared on his show this week. “They’re unfavorably framing it as veterinary medicine.”

“Do you think that’s a problem that your news network lies?” Rogan asked. “Dude, they lied and said I was taking horse dewormer.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, they shouldn’t have said it was horse dewormer,” Gupta responded. “If you got a human pill, because there were people who were taking it, the veterinary medication, and you’re not obviously because you got it from a doctor, so it shouldn’t be called that.”

Many at CNN continue to refuse to admit they lied, including Don Lemon, who this week repeatedly misled his viewers on this issue.

Gupta’s honesty here, by contrast, is refreshing. It is a rare moment when a media personality is willing to admit an outlet’s obvious failure to live up to the journalistic code of ethics. During this entire discussion, Gupta was largely right about the science, and his ability to admit the truth regarding CNN lends him more credibility overall. And Rogan’s questions were legitimate and reasonable; none of them were out-of-bounds. As a physician, I regularly hear questions like Rogan’s from parents concerned about getting their kids vaccinated.

It was all the more disappointing, then, that Gupta was unable to successfully answer the risk/benefit questions. Is the risk of getting COVID worse for kids than the risk of vaccination? The answer should have been a resounding yes. Flip that around: Do the benefits of vaccination for kids outweigh the risks of getting COVID? Again, absolutely, yes. Rogan asked if the risk for adults of getting the vaccine is lower than the risk of going without it: The answer is yes. Gupta seemed to have difficulty in making this clear in a way that Rogan would find persuasive.

But this is not to pile on Gupta. The medical profession as a whole simply has not been able to explain the risk/benefit calculus to a segment of the population resistant to the vaccine. Many hear Anthony Fauci as talking down to them, whether on masks or gatherings or vaccines. Biden called people’s questioning of the value of masks “Neanderthal thinking.” Is it any wonder that people aren’t going to listen to him on matters related to their health?

This is where Gupta and Rogan did the country a true service: They had a two-hour discussion representing our greater debate over COVID in civil and respectful terms. Maybe Sanjay Gupta persuaded some people at least to take a second look at the data, and that in itself would make this a worthwhile endeavor. The true hope is that instead of the silly demagoguery that has dominated much of the discussion during the pandemic era, more discussion like this can occur, for the benefit of everyone.
#15194776
SpecialOlympian wrote:So how much horse paste did you eat today?

Do you work for CNN?

The only reason Rogan cares about some dumb comment on CNN that neither he nor any of his pothead weightlifter audience watched is because he is personally offended by it, which prompted him to give more pushback to his guest than any other subject he has ever presented.

He cares because an international news org many times reported that he was using "horse dewormer", which is obviously disingenuous misinformation since it's a human drug. If you can also give a dog an antihistamine like Benadryl that doesn't mean it's a dog medication or dog food. But I understand why you don't understand the difference because of your nasty CNN-like rhetoric.

Which, as I have stated before, included giving a platform to millions so his guests could deny that HIV causes AIDS and allow Gavin McInnes to brag about how people in his fun boy's club commit fascist acts of violence, and that said acts of violence are required to advance. So it's really, really funny when Rogan, of all the possible assholes who could be saying this, goes around telling people that they're not using their platform responsibly.

To put this in perspective, Joe Rogan has used his platform to legitimize his personal friend Alex Jones and present him as a "crazy, but smart and right" guy to his audience. So I'm not really inclined to think his point is salient, relevant, or coming from a place of intellectual honesty.

WTF does Gavin McInnes and Alex Jones have to do with this issue of CNN? This issue isn't a referendum on Joe Rogan's character, it's about CNN's character as a news org where actual journalism is supposed to take place.

The difference between Joe Rogan and CNN is that Rogan is some dude-bro with a podcast that can say whatever he wants, while CNN is a professional news organization that has the responsibility to report facts without distorting the truth. Misinformation from some dude-bro is much different than some misinformation from a professional news org. It's terrible journalism.

The few studies that proved it had any great efficacy turned out to be completely fraudulent.

Hey great so now we can't trust science anymore. Or maybe we can't trust the BBC and CNN? Which leads to tens of millions of people feeling they can't trust anyone and so not trusting vaccines or election results...so here we are! And you're part of the problem, repeating CNN "horse paste" rhetoric. Facts and journalism are more important than narratives or winning the "culture war". But I know you don't understand that.
#15194780
Unthinking Majority wrote:He cares because an international news org many times reported that he was using "horse dewormer",


Maybe he shouldn't be using a horse dewormer to treat COVID then?

The difference between Joe Rogan and CNN is that Rogan is some dude-bro with a podcast that can say whatever he wants,


Yes, while eating horse paste. I'm sorry, was there more than one instance where some rando CNN person said it? Because I just skimmed the one video shared where it was mentioned.

And again, just lol that the dude who gladly lets nazis come onto his show to brag about the violence they commit with zero pushback has the balls to criticize anyone for misusing their platform lol.

Hey great so now we can't trust science anymore. Or maybe we can't trust the BBC and CNN? Which leads to tens of millions of people feeling they can't trust anyone and so not trusting vaccines or election results...so here we are! And you're part of the problem, repeating CNN "horse paste" rhetoric. Facts and journalism are more important than narratives or winning the "culture war". But I know you don't understand that.


Rogan and anyone who takes his opinions on horse paste seriously weren't watching CNN to begin with. Joe Rogan is just a big dumb baby who is angry that people are making fun of him for eating horse paste.

You know for a comedian I'd think Rogan would have thicker skin and not get all pissy about how much he loves his apple flavored goop.
#15194793
Pants-of-dog wrote:We are going in the opposite direction here.

Schools are now not allowed to ask kids if they have been vaccinated.


Is this now the case in Canada?
#15194814
@Doug64 , you replied;


Agreed, so just what is the percentage of those refusing to get inoculated that are doing so out of health issues that increase the risk that the inoculation could kill them, and how many are healthy people simply choosing not to risk it? For any cost/benefit analysis, that number is important and I have no idea what it is.


No, the real important number is of those who have the decency to take a vaccine willingly because they not only don't want to get sick, but also don't want to risk the lives and health of other people.


We all evolve over time, I'm not the hardcore Libertarian I used to be. But you're going to need to explain that better. For instance, for the question of requiring children in schools to mask up, the death rate we are willing to accept without similar requirements for the flu season is certainly relevant.


Well yeah, I'm a Socialist, so issues of ''buying insurance'' and paying more for this and that is an unfortunate element of this particular society at this point in time. I recall a conversation I just had today with a friend, who said that his father remembered everyone simply being mandated to take their ''experimental'' Polio vaccine, no ifs and or buts, no whining about the State or any of this bullshit, for bullshit it is.


How so?


Because they're based on questionable sources.


There's a difference between choosing whether to risk your life and having the government force you to do so.


God damn it, you again ignore the big gaping hole in your ideological opposition; what about risking the lives of other people? Who defends them and their right to not suffer illness or death unjustly because of the ideological lunacy of others, if not the Government?


Now, as I've said, I'm no longer the Libertarian I used to be, and one example is the draft: hardcore Libertarians oppose the draft on principle, arguing that the government has no right to force you to fight and maybe die for a cause you don't believe in, I've come around to the position that fighting and maybe dying for your country is an inherent aspect of citizenship--one of the responsibilities that balances out the rights that citizenship brings. So I could see an argument for forced vaccinations when the price of not doing so is high enough--polio, for example, or measles. But again, I need numbers for that judgment call--how effective are the vaccines really?


No, it comes down to other people, it's as simple as that.


How do those numbers compare to natural immunity? What level of risk are we talking about for taking the vaccines? What is the level of risk for not taking the vaccines? I suppose what it comes down to is, how many people like Jessica are you willing to kill so that your mother can feel comfortable visiting her siblings?


What rotten and ghoulish calculus...

How many are you and others like you willing to kill for your notions of ''liberty'', of not taking a vaccine that already has saved a tremendous number of people's lives?

See, I know why the puppet masters are allowing this nonsense to flourish; so that many more hundreds of thousands die of COVID-19 on Biden's watch, so that this Pandemic drags out longer so that the GOP retakes Congress in 2020 and wins the Presidency again in 2024. Damned if they do, and damned if they don't, the Democrats are just moral cowards enough (and hate the kind of people who are resisting, both persons of color and ''deplorables'' alike) that they won't do what it would take to break this resistance to the vaccines. So their enemies will eventually break them for good. And good riddance to them.

At this point, i'll be real frank; if I were President of the United States, there would be no acceptable resistance to what would be an almost universal vaccine mandate, and jail would be awaiting everyone who did not have a legitimate medical reason for refusal to take the vaccine. But that's not going to happen. Because there's hardly an American alive, even the so-called ''Leftists'', who isn't half in the camp of the Outlaw, the Anarchist, at heart. This Nation was born in Rebellion, born in blood and the echo of the traitor Archangel's ''Non Serviam''.... And you see where that got him?
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