A controversy is in full swing regarding Joe Rogan, the world’s most popular podcaster, who stands accused of spreading mis-information regarding the Covid-19 vaccine on the Spotify platform with whom he holds an exclusive deal. World famous artists have left the streaming platform in protest and the chief spokesperson for President Biden has made disapproving noises.
I was introduced to Joe Rogan by Benjamin Alexander, Jamaica’s first Olympic Alpine skier, while acting as his mentor during his bid to qualify for Beijing 2022. Joe Rogan interviewed (as many as five times) Dr. Rhonda Patrick, a scientist interested in health and longevity. Dr. Patrick held views which approximated my own and had research to back them up (built mostly on meta-analysis, a technique at the time new to me); views I was trying to interest Benjamin in. In meta-analysis, many similar small studies are grouped together, differences controlled for, and more accurate conclusions drawn. Fascinating stuff.
While growing up in my native Jamaica I was an avid listener to William “Mutty” Perkins, a radio call-in talk show host. Widely read and sceptical with a sound understanding of human nature, Mutty was irreverent, delving into matters with a stubbornness and determination that I admired and have been influenced by.
Joe Rogan reminded me of Mutty, who would have thrived in this new world of the Podcast. Elon Musk, Malcolm Gladwell, Dr. Shanna Swan, Jordan Peterson, Kevin Hart, Snoop Dogg, Dave Chappelle, those are some of Rogan’s podcasts I have watched in full. I have watched many more clips, but an aversion to subscriptions and the difficulty of getting Spotify in many parts of the world that I frequent have meant that I have not watched a full podcast since Rogan’s mega deal with Spotify. Instead, I have to be satisfied with the clips that are put up on YouTube for promotional purposes, which are, of course, chosen to pass the scrutiny of Youtube censorship.
I have said this before and it is of especial importance to anyone who is trying to make their way in the world and are disadvantaged in some way, whether by race, ethnicity, colour, nationality, sex, religion, region, or education. Disadvantages amount to the same thing and most of us face it. If we are to be successful in overcoming our circumstances then “clear thinking” is a tool that we must master and develop the habit of using daily, maybe even hourly. This is the skill to use what we know and understand to assess new situations and unseen dangers; to make an educated guess as to what is on the other side of the hill.
Clear thinking is not to be confused with critical thinking, it is not a critique or logic. Both methods suffer from the fault of failing to fully consider human nature in their assessments. Clear thinking begins with our nature, accepts our bias, seeks to challenge it, contemplates different perspectives without fear, going where the understanding leads, no monopoly on truth, constantly questions our world view, all with the aim of properly understanding a situation with the aim of finding solutions which are workable.
This is where Joe Rogan comes in for me, he helps me to build what I call my personal diversity, to hear and consider views which are outside the mainstream, and to take from them what I can, and after my own testing of them’ add them to my perspectives, leading I have found to deeper understanding and often better choices.
By way of example I will use the COVID-19 pandemic and the things I have stated in this Blog,
February 26, 2020; YOUR HEALTH IS YOUR RESPONSIBILITY. At the beginning of the pandemic I gave a vitamin prescription developed by Dr. Linus Pauling which I have used as have the people close to me and many I coach. I personally have never tested positive for COVID, though I have encountered it on more than one occasion. Being very sensitive to pathogens from years of practice I was able to know that what I was experiencing was new to me. One thing I would say differently from this blog is that my experience has been that the use of masks and especially social distancing has led to a reduction in my use of vitamin C, which I take to mean that my exposure to different types of virus was greatly reduced. I intend to use the current environment to continue to wear masks whenever I feel the need.
April 22, 2020;TIME TO REVISIT PAULING. Vitamin C and copper, the regimen to boost your immune system and to destroy viruses and bacteria. The post script on April 29 was a detailed description of the vitamin regimen.
May 6, 2020. HELLO COVID-19 (pleased to meet you). Written after I had had some time to research and understand, explore different perspectives. Use what you know to try to understand what you do not, what is on the other side of the hill.
As we deal with the COVID-19 pandemic there are some lessons from history we ignore at our peril. Respiratory viral infections are really difficult to control as vaccines are hard to develop and limited by mutations. The ‘pandemic’ means it will always exist somewhere, biding its time, waiting for its chance.
We are going to have to come to an accommodation with COVID-19. We are going to have to live together. We need to improve our immune system function through natural means so we reduce the incidence, severity, and duration of infection. If we do not manage this, then our civilisation will change fundamentally.
July 7, 2020’ COVID-19 AND THE SCIENCE. I love science, I love technology, one of the areas in which it is not very good is in human health. In this blog I explore lockdowns and vaccines and their shortcomings, shortcomings which have been borne out with the passage of time.
In the postscript I proposed a use of the actual virus on the healthy population of nations as a route to herd immunity, not many takers, but eventually that is what eventually happened in the UK.
September 2, 2020. DEALING WITH THE PANDEMIC. Probably my best expression on the pandemic.
As I have pointed out before, the root cause of the pandemonium brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic is the use of Mediaeval methods to combat a 21st century problem. This is papered over by the placing of technology over these ancient responses, such as an ‘app’ on your phone for track and trace or the production of ever more complex drugs to combat the virus at every level imaginable. No different really from Florence in 1348.
September 28, 2020; DO NOT WASTE THIS PANDEMIC; It begins to dawn on me that this is not going to be an eighteen month thing, with the virus on the one hand and the people making a lot of money on the other this is going to drag on for years. What to do? You have to look for yours, cold hard truth ‘people die, property remains’.
Assess your risk, write down the bad things that can happen over the next few months, then take each and write down what you would do. Who can you live with if evicted, would I need a shelter, how do I eat if fired. Where is the free internet?
December 7, 2021; YOU ME AND COVID-19. I tried very hard not to write about the pandemic in 2021, but it would not go away. In this post I reiterate that you need to go on the offensive, find the opportunities and exploit them.
The accepted narrative is not hard to find, BBC, Economist, Financial Times, New York Times, I get news from them in one way or another. Much harder to find informed dissent. Be aware dissent is not left versus right, it is not democrat versus republican or conservative versus labour, these are all in the same ecosystem, two sides of the same coin. This is why the Joe Rogan Experience is so important, there are not many places where you can hear informed dissent being expressed. Other places I use are Russell Brand, Dr. Suneel Dhand, Dr. John Campbell, MedCram, The Print (Indian) all of which can be found on YouTube. As part of my efforts to learn Spanish I also follow Spanish language news on BBC Mundo and CNN Espanol, with very different perspectives than their English counterparts.
The pandemic response has been problematic the world over. Problematic because the world cannot afford this again and the next pandemic and or major economic meltdown is not a matter of decades away, maybe years if we are lucky. Liberal western democracies, if they are to survive need to take a hard look at what went on, we in the west should not have the luxury of welding people into their homes as happens elsewhere, but the fear generated by COVID has led to some extraordinary behaviour from politicians on the left and the right, imposing conditions on their populations based on very narrow assessments dominated by the virus. A review of the response needs to look broadly at overall outcomes to see who died where and how.
Governments with greater resources in the west are going to have to, for their own good, admit the faults of the last two years and go about setting them right. Chief of these for me was the one (maybe two) dimensional thinking which led to ineffective methods to halt the spread and a convoluted approach to the treatment of COVID, a myopic view of the situation dominated by ‘the virus sets the timetable’. The use of artificial intelligence and virtual reality to create simulations, multi dimensional, multi disciplinary, where we add the insights of historians who have studied the impact of pandemics over time are added to epidemiologists and virologists, economists and psychiatrists to create a picture, of who dies where and when if we do this. The technology exists, we need the will and a commitment to reality. Importantly we need the input of poor disadvantaged people, who can comment on what they would likely do in a given scenario.
A simple truth that is not being talked about is that those of us of the Anglo Saxon diaspora, including colonised people and enslaved people, who now reside in the UK, USA, Canada, the English speaking Caribbean, Australia, New Zealand and India are simply too sick. With the possible exception of India this is a problem of excess calories, not too little. We do not need complicated tests to know this, simply looking around you at the excess calories a majority of us carry around should be enough. Obesity is the outward manifestation of consuming too much bad calories and moving too little. Diabetes and pre-diabetes as defined by the medical profession is as high as 75% of these populations. We simply do not have the money to do this again, the trillions of dollars are not there to buy our way out of the next pandemic, life in the west as we know it could change forever. The elites will find a way to go on, the poor will suffer what they must. If you are disadvantaged you cannot afford to be pre-diabetic, it is not difficult to avoid, you can find more on that here.
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