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Alex Berenson (2021) - Unreported Truths of Covid-19 and Lockdowns · The Joe Rogan Recap

• 0:00
  Welcome to the Joe Rogan recap. Great to be diving in.
• 0:03
  Today we're unpacking a really detailed conversation from The
• 0:07
  Joe Rogan Experience. It's episode hashtag 1582 with
• 0:11
  Alex Berenson. Right.
• 0:13
  And our plan is to really get into the weeds on the key points
• 0:16
  they made, things about cannabis, COVID-19, lockdowns,
• 0:20
  masks. Vaccines.
• 0:22
  Media narratives, the whole lot, we're drawing straight from what
• 0:26
  they said. Exactly.
• 0:28
  And we'll explore the different perspectives, maybe some
• 0:31
  surprising claims that came up during that chat.
• 0:34
  OK, so let's start where they did, which was actually
• 0:36
  cannabis. Yeah, it's interesting.
• 0:37
  They referenced a previous conversation they'd had about
• 0:40
  it. And this kind of set up
• 0:41
  Berenson's viewpoint, which he called a realistic perspective.
• 0:46
  They touched on how there's a lot of, you know, pro cannabis
• 0:48
  sentiment out there. But the point made was the need
• 0:51
  to be honest about potential downsides too, especially now
• 0:55
  with legalization spreading. Right, you can't just focus on
• 0:57
  the good stuff. Apparently he brought up some
• 0:59
  anecdotal evidence from his book Tell Your Children.
• 1:02
  Yeah, about possible links between marijuana use and
• 1:06
  schizophrenia. Which is, you know, a heavy
• 1:09
  topic. Definitely, but what I found
• 1:11
  interesting was he also mentioned look he enjoys
• 1:13
  cannabis himself sometimes which.
• 1:15
  Adds a layer, doesn't it? It's not just black and white.
• 1:17
  Exactly, he's saying something can have risks but that doesn't
• 1:21
  mean it's universally bad or should be banned out right.
• 1:24
  It's about nuance. And that kind of complexity,
• 1:28
  acknowledging nuance, that seems to be a theme that runs through
• 1:31
  their whole discussion, really. OK, so shifting over to
• 1:35
  COVID-19, let's establish Berenson's basic position first.
• 1:40
  He wasn't denying it. Right.
• 1:41
  No, not at all. He made it clear.
• 1:42
  Look, the virus is real. It's contagious.
• 1:45
  People have definitely died from it.
• 1:47
  So what was his main issue then? What was the core argument about
• 1:51
  the pandemic? It really boiled down to the
• 1:53
  response. He argued that the societal
• 1:55
  reaction, especially the heavy reliance on lockdowns, was in
• 1:59
  his view, a dangerous overreaction.
• 2:02
  OK. And he felt there wasn't enough
• 2:03
  focus on just general health and well-being during all of that.
• 2:07
  You're. Right.
• 2:08
  He talked about how things shifted started, as you know, 15
• 2:11
  days to slow the. Spread.
• 2:12
  Flatten the curve. Yeah.
• 2:13
  But then it seemed to morph into this goal of preventing all
• 2:17
  COVID illness, all death, almost no matter the cost.
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  And he specifically raised concerns about things like
• 2:23
  school closures, the impact on kids.
• 2:25
  And making kids scared of just playing outside, that kind of
• 2:28
  thing. Yeah, the normalization of fear
• 2:30
  around everyday activities touches on how the goals maybe
• 2:33
  weren't clearly defined or seemed to change over time.
• 2:36
  From just stopping hospitals being overwhelmed to something
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  much broader. Exactly, and he mentioned his
• 2:41
  own feelings evolved too, like initially he was worried about
• 2:44
  how severe it was. Like everyone, probably.
• 2:46
  Right. But then, based on anecdotes or
• 2:49
  what he was seeing people cashing it and recovering
• 2:52
  relatively quickly, maybe differently than the flu,
• 2:54
  sometimes his perspective shifted.
• 2:57
  He used that term fear porn. Yeah, strong language.
• 3:01
  He felt the risk of death was being exaggerated.
• 3:04
  And he made that distinction, which became a big talking point
• 3:07
  everywhere, didn't it? Dying from COVID versus dying
• 3:10
  with COVID. Especially when talking about
• 3:11
  people with other serious health problems, comorbidities.
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  Which leads right into the next big chunk how deaths were
• 3:18
  counted and the whole PCR testing thing.
• 3:20
  He really hammered on the age factor.
• 3:22
  The risk isn't uniform. Not at all, he said.
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  The risk for older people is massively higher than for
• 3:28
  younger people, like hundreds, maybe even 1000 times greater.
• 3:32
  That was the figure he used. Yeah, a huge difference.
• 3:35
  He did acknowledge that, yes, younger people sometimes got
• 3:38
  very sick. But he made the point that this
• 3:41
  also happens with the flu. It just doesn't usually become a
• 3:44
  massive national news story every single time.
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  And he floated a pretty controversial idea about
• 3:49
  ventilators early on. Oh.
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  Yeah, the meat bellows analogy. Yikes, the idea that maybe using
• 3:55
  them too aggressively too early could have actually caused lung
• 3:59
  damage and contributed to mortality rates.
• 4:01
  It speaks to how much uncertainty there was, right?
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  Doctors were learning on the fly.
• 4:05
  Treatment evolved rapidly. So was the initial approach
• 4:08
  maybe not the best in hindsight? That's the question he raised.
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  And looping back to counting deaths, the difficulty
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  especially with elderly people who have multiple health issues,
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  if they test positive, what was the primary cause of death?
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  That with versus from question again, it's tricky very.
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  And that's where the PCR testing comes in, he explained.
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  You know how it works by amplifying genetic material.
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  And the key factor is the cycle threshold, the seat value, how
• 4:36
  many times they amplify it. Exactly, He said most places
• 4:39
  were running tests at 3740 cycles, which is quite high.
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  And his argument was. That at those high thresholds,
• 4:45
  you might detect tiny, tiny fragments of viral RNA long
• 4:50
  after someone's infectious is over.
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  They might not be sick, might not be contagious, but they
• 4:54
  still test positive. Which could potentially inflate
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  the case numbers we were seeing. That was his claim.
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  Now. The rationale for high cycles,
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  he suggested, was probably to cast a wide net.
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  Catch everyone possible for quarantine for tracing.
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  Presumably, but he pointed out the knock on effects.
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  A positive test means isolation, missing work, fear, and it
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  contributes to the overall death count figures if that person
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  later dies, even if COVID wasn't the main driver.
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  Plus there is the whole debate around asymptomatic spread.
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  How much does it really happen? Different experts had different
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  views. He brought up the historical
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  context too. Remember, early on the worry was
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  under counting deaths. Right, the whole excess deaths
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  calculation, comparing deaths now to previous years.
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  But then later the concern shifted, partly because these
• 5:41
  PCR testing issues to maybe over counting deaths attributed
• 5:46
  specifically to COVID. So the data interpretation it
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  it's complex. It wasn't necessarily
• 5:51
  straightforward. Definitely not, which leads to
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  another area they touched on money.
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  The financial incentives? Did hospitals get paid more to
• 5:59
  classify deaths as COVID? Well, their discussion concluded
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  probably not directly for the cause of death classification
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  itself. However, they did talk about a
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  reported financial incentive for hospitals to classify a case as
• 6:12
  COVID. Apparently, there was a
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  temporary 20% reimbursement fee from Medicare for COVID cases, a
• 6:18
  20% bump. Yeah.
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  And the suggestion was that private insurers often follow
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  Medicare's lead on things like that.
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  And this applied even if the person just tested positive but
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  had no symptoms. That was the assertion made in
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  the conversation. So it wouldn't support the idea
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  of hospitals falsely claiming deaths were COVID just for
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  money. But it might incentivize testing
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  more people and making sure every positive case gets coded
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  as COVID regardless of severity. That seems to be the implication
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  discussed. They also briefly wondered if
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  this affected how many pneumonia deaths were reported that year,
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  whether those numbers looked lower.
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  Interesting. OK, let's switch gears again.
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  Masks and lockdowns. Huge topic.
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  Massive Berenson used California as a kind of real world test
• 7:00
  case. How so?
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  He pointed out that many areas had high mask compliance.
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  People were generally following the rules, but California still
• 7:08
  saw huge surges in cases. So his point was, if masks were
• 7:12
  super effective on a population level, you wouldn't have seen
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  that that. Was his argument.
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  Now the host did push back a bit.
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  Right, mentioning things like population density, essential
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  workers who couldn't stay home. Indoor spread, especially in
• 7:26
  crowded housing or workplaces, those factors definitely play a
• 7:30
  role. And they both seem to land on
• 7:31
  the idea that, yeah, indoors is where the main spread happens.
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  For sure, Berenson was skeptical about blaming places like bars
• 7:38
  for major community spread, though he shared an anecdote
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  about someone he knew getting it elsewhere.
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  And he was big on being outdoors, opening windows.
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  Yeah, ventilation, he said in some early studies suggesting
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  outdoor transmission was pretty rare.
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  Then there's the cultural angle on masks.
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  Oh yeah, the point about mask wearing in some Asian countries
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  being a signal. Like I'm sick.
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  I'm being considerate. But if everyone wears one all
• 8:02
  the time. Then that signal gets lost,
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  right? It doesn't mean the same thing,
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  He. Also made that weird observation
• 8:07
  about Twitter profile pics with masks.
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  Yeah, correlating mask profile pics with more negative online
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  interactions, but random but. Well, he acknowledged, papers
• 8:19
  exist supporting mask efficacy. He did, but he questioned how
• 8:23
  much that translates to the real world stopping population level
• 8:27
  spread. They also touched on viral load.
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  Does getting a bigger dose of the virus make you sicker?
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  Seems opinions differ on that. And then he listed the downsides
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  of mandates as he saw them. Societal fear.
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  Impact on kids. People with developmental
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  disabilities. The waste from disposable masks.
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  His bottom line was that he didn't see strong evidence they
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  were saving lives on a grand scale.
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  And he mentioned the social pressure aspect, the virtue
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  signaling idea. It really encapsulates how
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  divisive the mask issue became, moving beyond just the science
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  into social and political territory.
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  OK, Next up, vaccines, specifically hesitancy around
• 9:02
  the new mRNA 1. Right.
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  Berenson was open about his personal decision not to take
• 9:06
  the mRNA vaccines at that time. What he cited their newness, the
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  mRNA technology being relatively novel for vaccines on this
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  scale, and his personal risk benefit calculation for his age
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  and health. He didn't feel the risk from
• 9:19
  COVID for him, justified taking what he saw as a newer, less
• 9:23
  understood vaccine technology. He mentioned side effect rates
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  from the trials. Yeah, he quoted a figure around
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  17% for what they call Grade 3 or 4 adverse events after the
• 9:34
  second dose of some vaccines. What does that mean?
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  Grade 3 or 4. Grade 3 is basically interfering
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  with daily activity, maybe needing medical attention but
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  not hospitalization. Great 4 is more serious, like
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  needing hospitalization. High fever was an example given.
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  And he contrasted vaccine immunity with natural immunity.
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  Suggested natural immunity might be longer lasting and raised
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  some questions about T cell immunity from one of the
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  vaccines. But he made it clear he's not
• 9:58
  generally anti vaccine, right? Absolutely right, he said.
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  He's vaccinated, his kids are vaccinated with traditional
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  vaccines. His hesitancy was specific to
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  these new mRNA ones and his own situation.
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  And he acknowledged the calculation is different for
• 10:11
  older people. Definitely, he said.
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  The virus is much more dangerous for older folks, so the benefit
• 10:16
  of the vaccine likely outweighs potential risks much more
• 10:19
  clearly for them. He even recommended his own 76
• 10:23
  year old mother get it. So it's about individual risk
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  assessment again. Yeah, and concern about what?
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  He called quasi mandates pressure to get vaccinated to
• 10:32
  participate in society. He also seemed doubtful about
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  finding a magic bullet treatment like Tamiflu for the flu, but
• 10:38
  for Covad. Right, pointing out we still
• 10:40
  don't have that for the flu after all these years.
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  Then there was that odd anecdote about the plane.
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  Oh. The farting on the plane story,
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  yeah, that seemed like a bit of a non sequitur.
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  Maybe just in this aside about people being unpleasant
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  sometimes. Or maybe a slightly jarring
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  transition back to masks because he then gave his best argument
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  for them. Right.
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  The idea that maybe masks reduce the amount of virus you inhale
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  the viral load, potentially leading to the milder illness.
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  But even then, he said, the logic felt weak to him.
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  And he doubled down on thinking his own mask doesn't really
• 11:11
  protect him. He then talked about his online
• 11:14
  interaction interactions, especially on Twitter.
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  Getting into arguments with doctors, virologists.
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  Yeah, describing it as getting called names, accused of not
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  caring, facing online mobs or dogpiling for expressing
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  dissenting views. He credited his ability to speak
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  out to his financial independence from writing
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  novels. Right, saying he didn't have to
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  worry about losing a job over his opinions.
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  He also pushed back against saying lockdowns don't work flat
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  out because some places were still locked.
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  Down But he argued they might be counterproductive, forcing
• 11:45
  people inside where it spreads easier.
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  So what was his alternative? Basically, open schools, open
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  places of worship, try to get back to normal but make sure
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  hospitals aren't overwhelmed and really push for sick people to
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  stay home. And he voiced that common
• 11:59
  concern about governments getting power during a crisis.
• 12:03
  And being reluctant to give it back afterwards.
• 12:06
  He cited examples of politicians seemingly breaking their own
• 12:09
  rules. The Austin mayor, Doctor Burks,
• 12:12
  Gavin Newsom, that kind of. Thing OK, let's dive deeper into
• 12:15
  the vaccine development side, concerns about safety,
• 12:18
  liability. Yeah, they touched on potential
• 12:21
  long term liability for the companies given the newness and
• 12:24
  the emergency authorization process and the history of
• 12:27
  vaccine skepticism. Distinguishing again between
• 12:29
  traditional vaccines and the mRNA ones.
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  Right, saying the new tech invites a different kind of
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  scrutiny. He mentioned the file drawer
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  problem, the idea that historically negative clinical
• 12:40
  trial results might not always get published.
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  And question the transparency around long term safety data
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  after the initial trials. Specifically pointing out the
• 12:49
  relatively small number of very elderly people, like over 70
• 12:52
  fives in the initial Pfizer trial, even though they were the
• 12:55
  highest risk group. And he brought up a really
• 12:58
  charged allegation about a bioethicist.
• 13:00
  Yeah, alleging someone argued against prioritizing the elderly
• 13:03
  for vaccines based on race, which he strongly condemned.
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  The counter argument being you prioritize essential workers to
• 13:10
  stop the spread faster. That was discussed, but Berenson
• 13:13
  question the evidence that essential workers were
• 13:16
  necessarily spreading it more. He painted a sort of nightmare
• 13:20
  scenario where prioritizing healthcare workers could
• 13:23
  backfire if unforeseen vaccine problems emerged later.
• 13:27
  His stance was clear. Using race as a basis for these
• 13:30
  decisions is wrong. Unequivocally.
• 13:32
  This leads into the psychology of the pandemic fear.
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  Right, Berenson had this observation may be
• 13:38
  controversial, that the people who seemed most afraid were
• 13:42
  often, in his words, middle to upper class women, 20s to 40's,
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  The stereotypical Karen, as he put it.
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  And his explanation for that? A mix of things, maybe feeling
• 13:51
  more physically vulnerable, perhaps not digging super deep
• 13:54
  into the data themselves and consuming media narratives that
• 13:58
  heavily emphasized fear. If it bleeds, it leads
• 14:00
  basically. The idea that once people formed
• 14:03
  an initial strong reaction, it was hard to change their minds,
• 14:06
  even with new data. And social media acting as an
• 14:08
  echo chamber amplifying anxiety. He shared anecdotes about
• 14:11
  perceived exaggerations early on.
• 14:13
  Like his friend being overly worried about Trump's health
• 14:16
  post COVID and how these exaggerated risk perceptions
• 14:20
  seem to stick around. The media focus shifting
• 14:23
  primarily to just the raw death number without context.
• 14:26
  Yeah, like age comorbidities, he argued, this lack of context
• 14:31
  fueled poor policy decisions. Short term perceived gains
• 14:35
  leading to long term negative consequences.
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  He also speculated that maybe some people in the media had
• 14:40
  underlying health issues, making them personally more fearful.
• 14:44
  While acknowledging look early on, especially somewhere like
• 14:47
  New York, the fear was understandable.
• 14:49
  Uncertainty was high. But he criticized the
• 14:51
  persistence of what he called Chicken Little narratives that
• 14:54
  weren't corrected when proven less dire, like the initial
• 14:57
  panic over pediatric inflammatory syndrome.
• 15:00
  What about long haul COVID that came up too?
• 15:02
  It did. He expressed skepticism about it
• 15:04
  being a widespread phenomenon and people who only had mild
• 15:07
  initial illness. OK, important distinction.
• 15:10
  He wasn't dismissing long recovery for people who were
• 15:12
  hospitalized or on ventilators. No, he acknowledged, that's
• 15:15
  expected after severe illness. But for mild cases turning into
• 15:20
  debilitating long term symptoms, he was more doubtful.
• 15:23
  They discussed anecdotes like Mike Leo's fatigue or Cody
• 15:27
  Garbrandt, the MMA fighter having serious issues like blood
• 15:31
  clots. Yeah, questioning whether clots
• 15:33
  were directly virus caused or maybe due to immobility during
• 15:36
  illness. Berenson suggested many long
• 15:39
  haul symptoms and mild cases might be psychosomatic.
• 15:41
  Kind of resembling depression or anxiety, potentially made worse
• 15:45
  by lockdowns, fear and general stress.
• 15:48
  He also questioned studies showing lung scarring and mild
• 15:50
  cases, suggesting they might be small, uncontrolled or
• 15:53
  interpreted with bias. Similar to how he viewed the
• 15:56
  concerns about myocarditis in athletes based on one German
• 16:00
  study, potentially overblown from limited data.
• 16:03
  And again, the idea of financial incentives came up, this time
• 16:05
  for a diagnosing and treating long haul COVID.
• 16:08
  Potentially leading to more diagnosis and treatments,
• 16:10
  whether strictly necessary or not.
• 16:12
  Looking ahead, he seemed pessimistic about preventing
• 16:15
  similar reactions in the future. Why?
• 16:17
  2 main factors he highlighted. First, the sheer size and
• 16:21
  influence of the medical industrial complex, meaning the
• 16:24
  vast healthcare economy. He acknowledged most people and
• 16:27
  it meanwhile, but the system itself has incentives that can
• 16:31
  drive certain responses, maybe regardless of overall societal
• 16:35
  cost benefit. OK.
• 16:36
  And the second factor. Technology, specifically tech
• 16:40
  enabling remote work, lockdowns, digital tracking and control
• 16:44
  companies like Amazon, Google, Facebook benefited hugely.
• 16:49
  He mentioned his own experience with censorship.
• 16:51
  Yeah, alleging Amazon initially blocked his self published
• 16:54
  booklets on COVID, though they reversed it after public
• 16:57
  pressure. He argued these platforms should
• 16:59
  allow debate even if they disagree with the content.
• 17:02
  While acknowledging that yes, bad information and conspiracy
• 17:05
  spread online too, but. His point was that suppressing
• 17:08
  debate might actually push people towards more extreme
• 17:10
  views, and that tech companies could demonstrate they weren't
• 17:14
  profit driven by allowing open discussion.
• 17:16
  He felt the response to COVID would have been very different
• 17:19
  20 years ago without today's tech.
• 17:21
  Definitely. And while stressing the global
• 17:23
  death toll is significant, he kept coming back to the age
• 17:26
  skew. The vast majority being older
• 17:28
  individuals, which raises that difficult ethical question.
• 17:32
  Is a virus mainly killing older people less dangerous, or are
• 17:36
  efforts to protect them paramount regardless of the cost
• 17:39
  to others? It's a tough societal
• 17:42
  calculation. He was also critical of
• 17:44
  journalists. Yeah, feeling they largely
• 17:46
  failed to critically question health authorities, hold them
• 17:48
  accountable for changing narratives or check for
• 17:51
  consistency. Alleging political bias played a
• 17:54
  role too. Mentioning things like the early
• 17:56
  dismissal of the lab leak theory or the Hunter Biden laptop story
• 18:00
  as examples where he felt bias influence coverage.
• 18:03
  They mused about whether a truly objective news source is even
• 18:06
  possible. And acknowledged Rogen's
• 18:09
  platform allows for diverse, sometimes controversial voices,
• 18:13
  underscoring the need for critical thinking.
• 18:15
  He used that analogy about the atomic bomb.
• 18:17
  Right saying scientists provide input but ultimately politicians
• 18:21
  elected by the people need to make the big policy decisions in
• 18:24
  a democracy he criticized trump for in his view, being afraid of
• 18:29
  the scientists and not asserting leadership the.
• 18:31
  Core job of journalists, he argued, is just basic
• 18:34
  consistency checking overtime. Holding public figures to what
• 18:37
  they said previously. So wrapping up that final
• 18:40
  question about vaccine distribution, was it wise to
• 18:43
  support it? His answer was nuanced, as
• 18:46
  usual. Depends on age, he said.
• 18:48
  For older people, probably beneficial.
• 18:50
  The risk from COVID is higher. But for younger people under 50,
• 18:54
  say, he felt the calculation was less clear.
• 18:57
  He called it a lie to pretend the risks from the virus are the
• 19:00
  same for everyone. What about the argument that
• 19:02
  young people should get vaccinated to protect the
• 19:04
  vulnerable? He actually agreed that that was
• 19:07
  the best, most honest way to frame the potential benefit for
• 19:10
  younger demographics, not necessarily for their own direct
• 19:13
  protection, but for Community protection.
• 19:16
  He finished by noting the sense of forced compliance sometimes.
• 19:19
  People wanting everyone to do the same thing and acknowledging
• 19:23
  he expected backlash and misrepresentation of his views
• 19:26
  after the conversation. Which is always a risk with
• 19:28
  these complex charge topics. Absolutely.
• 19:31
  His points could easily be taken out of context.
• 19:33
  Well, thank you for taking this deep dive with us into the Joe
• 19:37
  Rogan recap. We've really covered a lot of
• 19:39
  ground based on that conversation between Joe Rogan
• 19:42
  and Alex Berenson. Cannabis, COVID lockdowns,
• 19:46
  masks, vaccines. It definitely highlights how
• 19:49
  complex and controversial these issues remain.
• 19:52
  We really hope hearing these different viewpoints laid out
• 19:54
  helps you, the listener, think through them.
• 19:57
  What stood out to you? Any new questions?
• 19:59
  Yeah, this is really just scratching the surface, isn't
• 20:02
  it? Hopefully this deep dive has
• 20:03
  given you some valuable insights and maybe sparked some further
• 20:06
  curiosity. And just a reminder, always try
• 20:08
  to evaluate information critically wherever you get it
• 20:11
  from and form your own informed opinions.
• 20:13
  Please join us next time for another deep dive into the
• 20:16
  sources shaping our world.