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“Joe Rogan fan”, for some, equals 🚩 🚩 🚩 🚩 🚩 🚩 🚩 🚩 🚩 🚩.

That might just be a good move for one’s health, considering how over 270 scientists, doctors, and healthcare professionals have called him “extraordinarily dangerous”.

Since 2020, when Spotify paid Rogan $100 million to host his podcast in an exclusive deal, the 54-year old has been outspoken on a number of contentious topics to his very large listenership.

At least 11 million people listen to each episode of The Joe Rogan Experience (JRE) podcast.

It is this vast audience size and the fact that a large portion of his listeners are at their most impressionable age (in their early 20s) that is really keeping the science and health community up at night.

With great power comes great responsibility, but Rogan has been using his “cult personality” to repeatedly spread misinformation about COVID-19, completely ignoring any and all calls to stop.

Now, as the COVID-19 pandemic nears its third year, science and health experts are taking a formal stand by penning an open letter, reported The Independent.

They are asking Spotify to “take action to halt the spread of false information about the COVID-19 and the efficacy and safety of vaccines”:

“Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, Joe Rogan has repeatedly spread misleading and false claims on his podcast, provoking distrust in science and medicine,” wrote the experts from the US, Canada, Britain and Australia.

“He has discouraged vaccination in young people and children, incorrectly claimed that mRNA vaccines are ‘gene therapy’, promoted off-label use of ivermectin to treat COVID-19 (contrary to FDA warnings), and spread a number of unsubstantiated conspiracy theories.”

Here’s more from one of the signatories, Anand Swaminathan, assistant professor of emergency medicine at St Joseph’s University Medical Centre in Paterson, New Jersey:

“Much of the alarm stems from the immense following Rogan has…

“Rogan has millions of followers and tens of millions of downloads/month. The combination of anti-science, anti-vaccine rhetoric with a large platform is an enormous issue and, in this case, an enormous threat to public health.”

If you are worried about the matter of free speech, another signatory, Imogen Coe, Founding Dean of the Faculty of Science at Ryerson University in Toronto, has an answer:

“There appears to be a conflation with ‘free society’ meaning anyone can say anything, including misinformation and falsehoods, without being held accountable for it.”

She added: “Falsehoods and misinformation that lead to illness and death (which happens when scientific consensus and public health directives are undermined) surely must be challenged in a free society.”

Absolutely. Especially when you consider that the total official death toll from COVID-19 is in excess of 5,5 million, with more than 880 000 of those in the US alone.

It is really a 21st-century problem that the COVID-19 pandemic is being intensified by another pandemic just as deadly, the pandemic of misinformation.

Read the full open letter here.

[source:independent]