Medical Doctor and CNN Medical Analyst takes on Joe Rogan over his COVID “nonsense therapeutic mix”

CNN medical analyst Dr. Jonathan Reiner laid into influential podcast host and comedian Joe Rogan on the Don Lemon Tonight CNN program last week. In an Instagram post earlier in the day, Rogan revealed that he is currently fighting COVID-19, and went on to list the multiple unproven or disproven drugs he took in an attempt to fight the virus.

In his Instagram video, Rogan said, “Turns out I got COVID, so we immediately threw the kitchen sink at it. All kinds of meds. Monoclonal antibodies, Ivermectin, Z-Pak, Prednisone, everything.” Rogan walked back anti-vaccination comments he made earlier this year, saying, “I am not a doctor. I am a f**king moron.” Reiner quoted that statement and said he doesn’t “quibble with that” before moving on to Rogan’s latest remarks. “He’s, again, causing a great deal of public disservice,” Reiner said, “when he describes a completely jumbled, sort of self-created medical regimen that he’s on right now.”

Reiner then went on to explain why each medicine Rogan named won’t work in this situation. Of ivermectin, the horse dewormer that has recently become popular among some who refuse to get vaccinated, Reiner flat out said that it does not work for COVID and “we [medical professionals] know that.” Reiner said that monoclonal antibodies are not for Rogan, they’re for people with mild to moderate symptoms at high risk of progression, and that it doesn’t seem like Rogan falls into that category. Reiner went on to say that the Z-Pak is an antibacterial medication which in no way will work for a viral illness, and that prednisone is only prescribed for hospitalized patients on oxygen therapy.

“He’s promoting, kind of a crazy jumble of, you know, sort of folk remedies and internet-prescribed drugs. It’s, again, dangerous now,” Reiner said. “He should have more sense. After encountering the disease, and again, I hope he does well and gets well quickly, he’s not helping matters when he promotes this sort of nonsense therapeutic mix.”

Rogan is just the latest in a string of COVID skeptics to be stricken with the virus, which Reiner hopes will compel him to push vaccination. “This is the missed opportunity for people like Mr. Rogan,” Reiner said. “He has all of these listeners, and the people that are listening to him are the least vaccinated group in the United States, sort of this 18 to 30-year-old group, people who think they’re invulnerable who have listened to him, and who have decided they don’t need to be vaccinated. He has the ear of these people. He could be a force for vaccinating this country, for putting the virus down by simply saying, ‘You know something? I was wrong.’”

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