Help me understand Joe Rogan's vaccination stance for people in their low-20s

Just correct his incorrect premise. The vaccine doesn’t provide perfect protection. You can still get covid and die.

At the end of the day, if you are unwilling to accept that covid comes with a death rate worth worrying about, then neither does the vaccine.

Overall too, I’d say as a general proposition governments are too slow to approve medicines. I hope the covid vaccine opens up the flood gets and we can get quicker approvals for experimental treatments. People worrying about 1 in 250,000 risk of blood clots are idiots.

also are there any past single dose medicines where side effects only showed up 1 year plus later?

I know there are cases of pharmaceutical drugs happening like this, but that involves people taking the drug everyday for a while, not one and done (example prednisone for arthritis, but people still take it)

You are wrong twice in one post. I’m not worried about the Covid death rate because it is so low as to almost be irrelevant. So many daily activities like driving are more dangerous. Hell, I probably have a higher chance of choking on my own food or falling down stairs then I do of dying from Covid.

As far as drugs go, you want to ask one of the thalidomide children their opinions on loose drug restrictions?

Not sure what that drugs relation is to this, however.

I'd rather those doses go to vulnerable people throughout the world, not me.

The vaccine and covid are two different things. So you can't really compare one to the other that way.

One could have much different long term effects than the other irrespective of how they're handled now

Ya, that’s my point, if you aren’t worried about the covid death rate, then you can’t be worried about the vaccine effects which are even smaller.

Sure, I’ll speak to the thalidomide children, but after I will speak to all of the people who died of aids during the governments refusal to approve experimental drugs because they may have killed the people who were destined to die anyway.

Why take my chances with the vaccine when I can take my chances with a disease that I would first have to contract before I could die from it. There are basically two barriers to negative side effects from Covid vs one with the vaccine.

Let’s just perform medical experiments on everyone then. We can start with prisoners, since they are not going anywhere anyway, then move on to the infirm, who in your own words, are going to die anyway. You walk a slippery slope with this argument.

The human body is an amazing thing. We should let it do it’s thing without shoving untested chemicals into it.

I try and avoid threads on the vaccine but sometimes hard.

First, a good point on listening to Joe speak on something you yourself know well. On many things it suggests he has crammed for the podcast by reading everything he could find on Wikipedia. I listen and usually enjoy the physiology/sports guests - or did when on YouTube. Entertaining.

On the OP take: 18-49 year old females with comorbidities are not who he is talking about. Anyone with comorbidities cannot fit the bill of not having to worry, and 18-49 is too large a range to be meaningful. He specifically said 20s, and healthy. He clearly has in mind active people with zero health issues.

You can tell he also does believe that it's safe to vaccinate, he just never wants to tie himself to anything and is used to couching things in terms like "for the most part". So I don't think there's anything controversial at all on his view - just that in his personal opinion, a 20-year old (say an athlete) could maybe go without. And tbh, they probably could, but they'd probably be fine with getting it too.

On safety: there is a world of difference between being "on a drug", and taking a once-off vaccine. The mRNA technology is not 2019-new as some make out, and the vaccine technology for respiratory viruses, on which Covid-19 vaccines is based, is not new. It is all well understood and numerous primate studies over past decades. The barriers to most normal research studies is always 1) funding 2) back and forth with phraseology and formatting of ethical applications - months often 3) recruitment phases and barriers due to lack of public interest/knowledge/incentive 4) running consecutive cohorts 5) time spent in writing journal studies and barriers to dissemination and publication - for those who aren't involved and who don't know, it can cost thousands for journal publication in some prestigious cases 6) KTP or knowledge transfer from study completion to industry.

For Covid-19, #2 probably still took a little time and was closest to normal processes of all of these, ironically as this is what most are concerned with, #3 was initially uncertain but actually surprisingly good, #4 was overcome by allowance for staggered cohorts - with all adverse events monitored. Thankfully there were few. Everything else as a barrier was removed.

Re: public side-effect fears etc, read up on the initial response by the public to the smallpox/cowpox vaccine. Very similar. And very quickly addressed for the level of knowledge at the time.

Why would you listen to a weird show host like Joe Rogan, when you can get your health advice from health experts like the CDC?

You guys obviously don't watch Rogan... he says in almost every show, quite self-deprecating, "no one should listen to me, I'm a moron." He says it all the time. His show is for fun.

Run more miles wrote:

What are Joe Rogan's credentials in medicine and public health?

What are your credentials for contributing on this forum?

not coming to Rogan's defense (although nothing he said seems that far field) but there is another way to look at this.

as an early 20-some who recently had COVID, it's my opinion that the vaccine shouldn't even be available to young folks with no complicating health issues. why?

we (18-25) are the demographic which contracts COVID the most, and die the least. the risk of death/lasting problems for people in this bracket without previous respiratory problems is extremely low.

we also know for a fact that while the vaccine does reduce viral load in an infected person, it does not make it impossible to transmit to someone else. the vaccine does not prevent you from contracting the virus, nor infecting others (though it may reduce the transmissibility according to some small data sets). its main purpose is to prevent complications in those who are at risk of dying.

given this information, it seems to me that we should prioritize the vaccination of people most at risk of DYING. the vaccine doesn't prevent infection or spreading - only severe symptoms which kill. what are we giving the vaccine to people in their 20's for (who are at very very low risk of dying) when they can still spread it to people who could die? just vaccinate everyone who's at risk of dying, then open it up to whoever wants it. sounds like common sense but i've been looked at funny for this take on multiple occasions.

The question is not "let's compare the risk of COVID to the risk of a new vaccine."

That's the wrong approach.

The right question is "what obligation do I have to help my family/town/state/nation/world get healthy again and stop dying"

Rogan's approach is "eh, I have zero obligation to help anyone else. My only obligation is to me, me, me. If I don't have a risk of death of COVID, I don't have any responsibility to stop being a vector of virus transmission. I also have millions of dollars and a secure job so it doesn't really matter to me if the economy stays closed. I especially dont' care about people in poor nation. Screw 'em. I'll be a free-rider here. "

Most people take a different approach. They say "even though I personally have little to no risk of death by covid, I will take the vaccine so I won't pass the virus on to others. If we all do this COVID will end, people will stop dying and the economy can fully open up again. It's an honor to help."

I think Rogan and those like him are dead wrong, selfish and complete free riders.

joed|rt wrote:

NERunner00053 wrote:

He's just saying dumb stuff and that's incredibly dangerous when you have that kind of a platform.

Look at excess deaths among those under 25. They are unchanged from the previous five years.

Covid-19 accounted for about 2% of all U.S. 15-24 year old deaths in 2020.

I'd expect that to show in excess death statistics, but if you have a credible source that shows otherwise I'd be interested in seeing it.

agip wrote:

The question is not "let's compare the risk of COVID to the risk of a new vaccine."

That's the wrong approach.

It's not "the wrong approach", it's one metric of many that goes into making a decision.

That said, for young adults the known risk of the vaccine appears to be significantly lower than the risk of contracting Covid-19 by any objective metric I've seen.

I'm a runner so i don't have to worry about respiratory issues. We should all hail joe rogain (even though he says not to listen to him, we should listen to him). The vaccine is as dangerous as covid, but since covid isn't dangerous you need to avoids the vaccine.

God of Wine wrote:

You guys obviously don't watch Rogan... he says in almost every show, quite self-deprecating, "no one should listen to me, I'm a moron." He says it all the time. His show is for fun.

OK, but very few watch a collection of whole shows.

It's the snippets that get out.

When he says:

“If you’re, like, 21 years old, and you say to me, ‘Should I get vaccinated?’ I’ll go ‘No,’ ” says Rogan in the episode.

This is him giving advice.

That comes off as him telling young people to not get the vaccine.

as a runer wrote:

The vaccine is as dangerous as covid,

So, if 33 million American covid cases lead to 580,000 deaths, then 200 million vaccinated should lead to an additional 3.5 million deaths.