Let’s Get Ready to Rumble
Ladies and gentlemen, in one corner we have Joe Rogan and RFK Jr. And the other corner we have a scrawny lad with an Afro hairstyle by the name of Malcolm Gladwell. At stake is the rotavirus and RFK Jr’s credibility.
In a recent episode of his Revisionist History podcast, Malcolm Gladwell digs into the efficacy of Rotateq, a vaccine against the Rotavirus. Rotateq is apparently also the subject of the third chapter in RFK junior‘s book, The real Anthony Fauci.
The podcast episode presents facts and scientists. The book on the other hand cites unverifiable numbers and leaves a lot of doubt. The origin of the numbers is questionable, even after contacting the office of RFK Jr.
Supporters in the camp of Joe Rogan and RFK Jr are dazzled by the data and take them face value. They live in happy-happy land. The notion that the I-am-just-asking-questions-guy isn’t really asking questions is not unsurprising, as Malcolm covers in The Joe Rogan Intervention episode.
I, on the other hand, don’t live in happy-happy land. Even when faced with data by Malcolm Gladwell, I remain skeptical. If Malcolm got this data fairly easily, why didn’t the New York Times, the Washington Post, or CBS 60 minutes or any other reputable no news source? Did they never even attempt?
If it was this easy to take apart chapter 3, how hard can it be to take apart the other chapters? Or is Malcolm Gladwell not telling us the full story?
The bottom line after listening to this podcast is that you shall be very skeptical of any numbers RFK Junior recites.
The recent John Oliver episode on RFK Jr proves the same.
(Starting at 20:50)
And I know there are some out there who still think: “Well, RFK is weird about vaccines, but he knows a lot about health-related issues.”But you would be surprised by just how wildly wrong he can be when he is spouting alarming, official-sounding statistics:
[KENNEDY] We are 4.2% of the world’s population. We buy 70% of the pharmaceutical drugs on Earth. 15% of American youth are now on Adderall or some other ADHD medication. When I was a kid — I always say this — a typical pediatrician would see one case of diabetes in his lifetime. Today, it’s one out of every three kids who walks through his office door. 20 years ago, there was no diabetes in China. Today, 50% of the population is diabetic.
Okay, so here’s the thing: all the numbers you just heard him say are wrong.
Americans don’t buy 70% of the drugs on Earth. We buy around 6%. 15% of American youth aren’t on ADHD meds — estimates put it closer to 5%. One in three kids don’t have diabetes — it’s actually 0.35% or 1 in 285 kids. And the rate of diabetes in China is roughly 12% — not, as I think you already know, 50%. Half of all the people in China do not have diabetes
Malcolm Gladwell and John Oliver have the resources and staff to investigate these claims. Most folks don’t have the time nor energy to do the same. Joe Rogan could have, but didn’t. He decided to not be a ringmaster, as he is from time to time known to do, but to join RFK Jr in his corner. And they are getting beaten up.