Joe Rogan Experience #1718 - Dr. Sanjay Gupta

1. 0:01 – 2:18

   Catching up in Austin: Texas growth, homelessness, and city changes

   1. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta0:01

      (drumming) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. (rock music plays) What's up?

   2. JRJoe Rogan0:13

      How are you?

   3. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta0:13

      I am, uh, delighted to be here, Joe. Thanks for having me.

   4. JRJoe Rogan0:15

      I'm delighted to have you. Thanks for reaching out, man.

   5. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta0:17

      Yeah.

   6. JRJoe Rogan0:17

      It's so nice to talk to you. It's been nice to get to know you.

   7. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta0:20

      You too, you too. Thanks.

   8. JRJoe Rogan0:21

      Are you enjoying Texas?

   9. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta0:23

      Yeah. I ... You know, it's funny. I hadn't been to Austin in some time, and it's, it's changed in a, in a, in a really good way. I was staying at a hotel downtown, walking around. Tons of cool restaurants. And I guess Austin City Limits has their little stage that's downtown.

   10. JRJoe Rogan0:39

       Mm-hmm. Yeah.

   11. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta0:39

       You know? There was a big thing going on there last night, and it was great.

   12. JRJoe Rogan0:43

       Yeah, they've recovered. It, it's, uh ... A few months ago, it was pretty rough with the tents and all the homelessness stuff, but they moved those folks into hotels and they've, uh, purchased some hotels.

   13. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta0:54

       Have they done that? Is that-

   14. JRJoe Rogan0:55

       Yeah, they've done ... The mayor's done a good job of trying to, like, clean up the situation. It's ... All over the country, anywhere you go, any big city, you have this fairly unique situation, uh, in terms of, like, modern times of people-

   15. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta1:11

       Mm-hmm.

   16. JRJoe Rogan1:11

       ... camping on the street.

   17. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta1:12

       Mm-hmm.

   18. JRJoe Rogan1:13

       I mean, I don't remember that as a child. Do you remember ... When did you remember first seeing tents?

   19. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta1:20

       I mean, you know, I grew, I grew up in small towns in the Midwest.

   20. JRJoe Rogan1:24

       Yeah.

   21. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta1:24

       And I was never living ... I never lived in big cities. I think I saw it sometimes when I, when I visited those cities, maybe, when I was a kid, but it wasn't a thing.

   22. JRJoe Rogan1:32

       It was very rare.

   23. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta1:33

       It was very rare, for sure.

   24. JRJoe Rogan1:35

       Yeah.

   25. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta1:35

       I think maybe California, to be honest, was the first time I really saw it, you know?

   26. JRJoe Rogan1:39

       I ju- ... I was just back in LA a couple of weeks ago and it's overrun. It's crazy. It's just ... I don't know how they ever fix it.

   27. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta1:46

       Are you, uh, are you happy with your move?

   28. JRJoe Rogan1:48

       I love it here.

   29. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta1:49

       Yeah.

   30. JRJoe Rogan1:49

       Yeah.
2. 2:18 – 4:01

   Why Gupta reached out: reaching beyond CNN and understanding “how people think”

   1. JRJoe Rogan2:18

      So, what made you, uh, want to come on the podcast?

   2. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta2:22

      Yeah, well, I, I, um, I like listening to you, Joe. I think you're an authentic guy. You know, see, I listened to your podcast-

   3. JRJoe Rogan2:29

      Thank you.

   4. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta2:29

      ... for, for a long time, and you take on some big issues, and I feel like there's a conversation to be had, you know? It's, it's, it's interesting times obviously with this whole pandemic, and I've struggled at times, uh, you know, really understanding not what people think. I think that that, that part you can get, what people think.

   5. JRJoe Rogan2:51

      Right.

   6. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta2:51

      It's the how people think.

   7. JRJoe Rogan2:53

      Mm-hmm.

   8. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta2:54

      So, what I would say is I was curious how you think. I mean, you know, how you approach things. And, um, and frankly, you know, I was gonna ask you sort of the same thing, like why you would have me on your podcast, right? I mean, if, if there's value to be added, if the conversation is useful. I think it is. I mean, I'll take it even a step further. You know, I g- ... So I'm on CNN, and I feel like the audience that shows up for CNN kind of gets it, gets what I'm saying. They, they, they hear it- they've heard it for a long time. It's preaching to the choir, I guess. Not even the converted, because they weren't converted. They, they believed this. But there's obviously a lot of people who, who think ... who, who aren't watching CNN, who ... Like, if I wanted to reach them in some way, I mean, you, you reach them. And I, and I thought to myself, if there's one person, really, that I would have a conversation w- ... And, and say, "Hey man, just listen to how I think about these things. I wanna hear how you think about them. Listen to how I think about these things," who would that one person be in the United States? And it was Joe Rogan.

   9. JRJoe Rogan3:56

      Hmm.

   10. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta3:57

       It was you.

   11. JRJoe Rogan3:58

       How weird.

   12. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta3:58

       So-

   13. JRJoe Rogan3:59

       (laughs)

   14. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta3:59

       Well, d- does that surprise you? That doesn't surprise you.

3. 4:01 – 9:17

   Publicly changing his mind on cannabis: evidence, bias, and moral urgency

   1. JRJoe Rogan4:01

      (clears throat) It does, it still surprises me. Um, I wanted to have you on, first of all, because I really respected that you made this change of opinion publicly. When you were first talking about marijuana-

   2. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta4:14

      Mm-hmm.

   3. JRJoe Rogan4:14

      ... uh, you were talking about it as if it had no medical benefit and it was really just a recreational drug that was possibly or probably harmful. Is that a f- assessment that you agree with?

   4. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta4:25

      Yeah, I, I think it certainly didn't seem to have any medicinal benefit.

   5. JRJoe Rogan4:28

      Right.

   6. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta4:29

      Yeah.

   7. JRJoe Rogan4:29

      But then upon further examination, you publicly changed your position, and, and you ... In, in doing so, you actually examined all the scientific evidence that pointed to, for many people with diseases, many people that are on chemotherapy, many people with, um, you know, some serious ailments-

   8. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta4:50

      Mm-hmm.

   9. JRJoe Rogan4:51

      ... marijuana can be very beneficial, and you talked about that and I really admired that, because that takes a lot of courage, because a lot of people, when they, um, have an idea and they proclaim it publicly, they double down, and they just ... They, you know, use confirmation bias and whatever, you know, echo chamber-

   10. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta5:08

       Right.

   11. JRJoe Rogan5:08

       ... news sources they can get to sort of confirm their initial position, and you didn't do that, and I, I thought that's a real, uh, uh, a real thinking person who is trying to honestly figure out what's going on instead of just working on being right.

   12. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta5:27

       Well, I ... Look, I, I appreciate that, and (clears throat) I have been ve- very ... It was very illuminating for me because I think the way that we become a more knowledgeable society, I think sometimes surprises people. Um, I do think, and maybe this'll dovetail even to a little bit of what's going on now, but, but the thing is that when, when you looked at the ... So if you were just to look at the bulk of evidence around cannabis, at that ... Uh, and I'm talking ... I wrote this TIME Magazine article back, you know, this was probably 12, 13 years ago, and I looked at the bulk of evidence, and you say, okay, I'm gonna just look at the 400 most recent papers. I'm gonna read the abstracts, I'm gonna dig in deep on some of them. And 94% of them were, were basically the hypothesis was-... where's the harm here? Show me the harm, right? The hypothesis was not, show me the benefit. That was only true for about 6%. So right away, you're dealing with a sort of very biased sort of set of data, and that's one stream up. Now, if you're just looking at papers, you're like, "Well this one, potential lung harm, this one, possible addiction, this one, gateway," you know, you're seeing all those individual studies. But at a broader level, one step upstream, you realize that most of the studies that are getting funded are designed to look for harm, right?

   13. JRJoe Rogan6:38

       Yeah.

   14. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta6:39

       So when I saw that, that was the first time I thought, "Well, why, why are the studies that are getting out there, why are they all designed to look for harm?" Then I started looking at other countries, and some really good research out of places like Israel, in particular. A guy named Roth Machulum, who's 91 years old now, he was the first guy to i- ever isolate THC and then synthesize it. He's been doing this work forever. He may get the Nobel Prize before he dies for, for his work in this. They were talking about the use of cannabis for all sorts of ailments, including refractory seizures in kids.

   15. JRJoe Rogan7:11

       Hmm.

   16. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta7:12

       And that one really, that really got to me for a couple reasons. One is that I think when you're trying to do studies on things like pain, it- it's- it's hard. It's a subjective thing, right? And so you think is, is how- how do you, how do you really have conclusive proof that this is working the way that you think it is? Someone says their pain is better and that's important, but how do you measure that? A little child who's having 300 seizures a week and is now not having seizures is a much more specific sort of metric. And it- it seemed to work really well in- in kids who did not respond to existing seizure drugs-

   17. JRJoe Rogan7:47

       Hmm.

   18. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta7:47

       ... which- which was kind of amazing to me. And I think I told you when we've spoken before that, that, to me, in some ways, that wasn't just a- a medical issue at that point, it was a moral issue, because nothing worked for these kids. And they were thinking about even compounding veterinary medications for them, and these parents are like, you know, in their kitchen sinks (laughs) stirring up, you know, cannabis, trying to get the formulation right to turn it into an oil or a tincture they could put it underneath the kid's tongue and- and it was working. And, you know, I did stories on these kids and they were emblematic of thousands of more kids. These weren't just anecdotal stories. And that's when I said, you know, "There's something here." But I got to tell you, um, when I wrote the article saying I changed my mind on this, y- y- you know, (laughs) you know, you hit send at night and then you wake up in the morning and- and I work at a university, I'm a, I'm a practicing physician, you know, I live in that world, and part of me did wonder, like, what is the response going to be? I felt very comfortable with what I had written. What I did not know was how it would be received.

   19. JRJoe Rogan8:49

       Yeah.

   20. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta8:50

       And that, and that's- that's always a challenge, I think. It doesn't-

   21. JRJoe Rogan8:52

       How was it received?

   22. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta8:53

       I think ... Well, I'm still employed, so that- that part of it was good. (laughs)

   23. JRJoe Rogan8:57

       (laughs)

   24. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta8:57

       You know, I- I, yeah, I didn't know if my chairman would say, "Hey look, you know, uh, I may agree or not agree with you, that's beside the point. You shouldn't have done this." Or whatever. I- I- I, you know, I had no idea how they were going to respond. I think it was received well, Joe. I think that, um, it added to the knowledge tree-

   25. JRJoe Rogan9:13

       Hmm.

   26. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta9:14

       ... of- of how we advance as a society.

4. 9:17 – 15:21

   Alcohol vs cannabis and the propaganda history of marijuana prohibition

   1. JRJoe Rogan9:17

      It's a sign of the times, I think. I think if you had done that a couple of decades ago, maybe there'd been a lot more pushback. I think people are coming to, uh, much more of an understanding. And- and- and also the logical aspect of it, like when- when people look at all the things that human beings are allowed to consume, in- including this, uh, that you gave me here. This looks ... It's pretty spectacular.

   2. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta9:44

      I'm pretty proud of my gift that I've given you here.

   3. JRJoe Rogan9:46

      Some serious bourbon here.

   4. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta9:47

      Well-

   5. JRJoe Rogan9:47

      But thank you for that.

   6. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta9:48

      For the man who has everything.

   7. JRJoe Rogan9:50

      This is, um, legal, you know? I mean, we can enjoy a glass-

   8. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta9:54

      Okay, yeah.

   9. JRJoe Rogan9:54

      ... it's normal, it's a n- normal thing. And we all agree to that. It's- it's a, you know, it's a longstanding tradition-

   10. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta10:01

       Yeah.

   11. JRJoe Rogan10:01

       ... for people to drink alcohol socially. Marijuana, for whatever reasons, and we could go into that if you want, but it's been demonized, uh, unfairly, and people know that. It's not like heroin or crack or things that you- you've seen people's lives fall apart on a- on regular basis, and I think most people are aware of that now. So the- in the- the era that you published that, it's- people have come to an understanding that it's not ... it's not one of the hard drugs. It's not the most dangerous thing in the world. It's not good for kids. It's not good for some people. It's not good for some people, maybe with, uh, possible schizophrenic tendencies. I think, uh, there's a real concern there.

   12. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta10:40

       Yeah.

   13. JRJoe Rogan10:41

       And, uh ... Yeah.

   14. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta10:42

       No, I- I mean, yeah. I, you know, it- it's- it- you're- you- you raise a really important point. You know, and one thing I- I tried to stay away from whenever I wrote about this was, I felt like it was a little bit of a trap to get into the moral equivalency of things.

   15. JRJoe Rogan10:56

       Mm-hmm.

   16. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta10:56

       Like, I think things should just stand on their own two feet.

   17. JRJoe Rogan10:58

       Yeah.

   18. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta10:59

       You know? Well, it's better than this, right?

   19. JRJoe Rogan11:00

       Mm-hmm.

   20. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta11:01

       It- what you're saying is true. I feel like alcohol can be a sledgehammer to the brain, I really do. If you think about the way alcohol affects the brain, very different than the way cannabis affects the brain. Um, and that- that part of it is true. But the idea that it could be a medicine in particular, I mean, you know, I- I think that that, that is really quite striking, and it's a plant, you know?

   21. JRJoe Rogan11:25

       Yeah.

   22. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta11:25

       And there's all these things. And I listen, like I said, I listen to your podcast and I listen to Brett and I listen to others and I get the points that they're making about that in terms of, can you look to the earth to heal? And oftentimes, you can, you know? We've been given a lot of things. But I think that with- with cannabis in particular, the- the- the evidence ... I'm not the first to say this, obviously. People have been saying this for a long time. Maybe the timing was right, but two decades ago people were saying this. Three decades ago, people were saying this. This was on the formulary in the United States in the 1940s, post-reefer- Reefer Madness, which I think was like 1936 or something like that. People were already saying, "Hey, wait a second. This could be used to treat addiction. This could be used to treat, you know, even, uh, Parkinsonian-like symptoms." There was all these things that they were putting out there, and then it went through this cultural sort of assassination for a while, which was- which was wild to sort of reflect on historically.

   23. JRJoe Rogan12:17

       Have you ever looked at the original cultural assassination of cannabis?

   24. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta12:20

       ... uh, like before Reefer Madness? Or-

   25. JRJoe Rogan12:22

       Yeah. Well, when it, when it all got... What... D'you know the origin of it?

   26. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta12:27

       Mm.

   27. JRJoe Rogan12:28

       It was all because of, uh, the, uh, the commodity of, uh, of hemp versus, um-

   28. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta12:35

       Yes.

   29. JRJoe Rogan12:35

       ... versus paper, versus... It, it was all... The demonization came about right at the invention of the decorticator. Decorticator was a device that was invented in the 1930s that was gonna effectively process hemp, uh, far easier. It was this r- crazy-looking machine. And, um, before that, they had used slavery to, uh, to process hemp back in the day.

   30. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta12:59

       Mm.
5. 15:21 – 21:42

   Gupta’s own cannabis experience: paranoia, dose control, and creativity

   1. JRJoe Rogan15:21

      Um, have you had any experiences on marijuana?

   2. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta15:24

      I h- I've tried it, yeah.

   3. JRJoe Rogan15:25

      Really?

   4. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta15:26

      I have. (laughs)

   5. JRJoe Rogan15:26

      When? Recently?

   6. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta15:27

      Not too recently. (laughs)

   7. JRJoe Rogan15:29

      (laughs) Have you... Do you have to be careful saying this?

   8. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta15:31

      No, I don't, I don't care. But I-

   9. JRJoe Rogan15:33

      You've had a drink before, right?

   10. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta15:34

       I've had a drink before.

   11. JRJoe Rogan15:35

       Oh, okay. Crazy.

   12. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta15:36

       Yeah. I, um, I... Yeah. I, I c- I could see the appeal of it. I really could. Um, I think I, uh, I... (laughs) I even kept a little log of my experience. I was like-

   13. JRJoe Rogan15:49

       Oh, really?

   14. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta15:49

       I, I just was curious, like, "What am I gonna write?" And some of the stuff that I wrote was pretty... I thought pretty brilliant, actually. (laughs)

   15. JRJoe Rogan15:56

       (laughs)

   16. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta15:56

       Um, but I will say this. It did make me... And I don't know if it's my own personal thing, like I'm bringing too much baggage to it. I did get the sense of paranoia that people often talk about, and I did not find that very comfortable.

   17. JRJoe Rogan16:08

       Yeah. It's supposed to be uncomfortable, I think. I think s- you're supposed to learn something from that.

   18. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta16:12

       Is that, is that right?

   19. JRJoe Rogan16:13

       Yeah, I think so.

   20. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta16:14

       I mean, I thought it was just supposed to be, like, fun and r- and, like-

   21. JRJoe Rogan16:17

       Eh, it can be.

   22. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta16:17

       ... anxiety-relieving.

   23. JRJoe Rogan16:18

       It can be that too. But the, uh... I think the uncomfortable feeling that you get from the paranoia, when it, uh, when it goes away, you're left with, uh, an understanding of maybe what are these things that you have issues with. And maybe if you could shore up those aspects of your life, you, uh, wouldn't have maybe these underlying feelings that you're suppressing and ignoring for the most part until you get high. I think you'd like to get your life to a place where when you get really high, you don't feel bad.

   24. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta16:50

       That would be... I think that, that's a really interesting way of looking at it. If I could get to that pla- if I've dealt with some of these things in my own-

   25. JRJoe Rogan16:57

       Yeah.

   26. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta16:57

       ... life, then if I were to get high, I would be-

   27. JRJoe Rogan17:00

       Yeah.

   28. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta17:00

       ... not as overwhelmed by the paranoia.

   29. JRJoe Rogan17:02

       Yeah.

   30. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta17:03

       I, I fully accept that, uh, I have issues that I gotta deal with, if that's what you're saying.
6. 21:42 – 27:11

   Trust, humility, and why scientists are perceived as arrogant

   1. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta21:42

      Yeah. I, I, I, I, uh, I totally, uh, see that. I, I, I gotta tell you, you know, I think that the biggest concern I have sometimes is that people aren't forthright with me, you know? Uh-

   2. JRJoe Rogan21:55

      About what?

   3. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta21:56

      Whatever it might be. It's not that I'm trying to not disclose something. But I think sometimes when I'm having conversations, people behave a certain way around me, they say certain things around me, around whatever the issue may be, you know?

   4. JRJoe Rogan22:06

      Mm-hmm.

   5. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta22:07

      They feel like they have to act a certain way around me. I, I'm pretty good, I think, at saying, "I don't know," when I don't know.

   6. JRJoe Rogan22:15

      Yeah.

   7. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta22:15

      Um-

   8. JRJoe Rogan22:15

      No, I think you are very good at that.

   9. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta22:16

      I'm humble, I think. I, I grew up humble. I, that's my family, you know. I'm a child of immigrants. My mom was a refugee for 12 years, you know. There's not, you know, there's not a lot of room f- for arrogance. There was a study that came out last summer, I think, that said scientists are increasingly perceived as arrogant.

   10. JRJoe Rogan22:32

       Hmm.

   11. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta22:32

       And I was ... That bothered me. I was, uh, I found that jarring because, you know, I'd ... Some people are arrogant, obviously, but I think as a general rule if you say, "Hey, look, this group of people is arrogant," and they're also the group of people, like with this pandemic, that, you know, we wanna listen to, but if we see them as arrogant and, m- you know, we, we don't want to, uh, be taking instructions or feel like it's too didactic or too top-down, there's not enough of a conversation going on, that's a problem. I ... Not that I'm strategically trying not to be that way, but I think that that's just not who I am, you know?

   12. JRJoe Rogan23:08

       Hmm.

   13. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta23:08

       I'm not trying to, to lecture people on, on this stuff.

   14. JRJoe Rogan23:13

       I think when you are a person that is discussing something that is affecting millions, if not billions, of people, you have millions, if not billions, of opinions that are coming your way. And when you have spent an enormous amount of time studying an issue and you're discussing this issue with people that have spent almost no time studying it-

   15. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta23:37

       Mm-hmm.

   16. JRJoe Rogan23:37

       ... maybe read a few things online or watched a YouTube video, I think it's very easy to get arrogant. It's also very easy to appear arrogant to try to stifle or to dismiss or diminish the opinions of people that don't agree with you.

   17. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta23:54

       Mm-hmm.

   18. JRJoe Rogan23:54

       And it is a very common thing when someone is constantly being questioned or constantly being pressured, and you can see it unfold. Like, a good example, I don't mean to pick on her, but the White House secretary, that b- Jen Psaki lady, she has over time adopted a, an increasingly more combative tone with people that are questioning her in the press. And, you know, she comes off a lot of times as arrogant.

   19. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta24:20

       Right.

   20. JRJoe Rogan24:20

       And I think that arrogance comes from this constant pressure of being questioned, constant pressure of being scrutinized and criticized. And she's standing up on that podium and she wants to stop it, stop it in its tracks. And so that sort of tone comes out of that. And unfortunately, it does the opposite of what it's intended. It's intended to sort of silence critics, but it just emboldens them and it makes them more enthusiastic about asking more grating questions and more questions that are gonna be more irritable or irritating, and get under her skin more and try to get more of a reaction like that from them. I think people do that with scientists, I think they do that with journalists, I think they do that with everybody.

   21. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta25:03

       Is it a, is it a game, though?

   22. JRJoe Rogan25:05

       Yes.

   23. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta25:05

       Like, so the people who are asking Jen Psaki questions, are they doi- and like, I guess the question is, are these legitimate questions or are they just doing it to get under her skin?

   24. JRJoe Rogan25:14

       I think they're definitely legitimate questions. But I think ...There's also an aspect of playing a little game.

   25. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta25:23

       Yeah.

   26. JRJoe Rogan25:23

       Trying to say something that you don't really have an answer to. Not really trying to have a, a rational discourse, but it's also, it's a terrible place to have a conversation.

   27. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta25:32

       Right.

   28. JRJoe Rogan25:32

       Like one person's on a podium, they have a microphone, you're wearing a mask, you're yelling things out. There's a bunch of other people behind you that also wanna a- ask questions.

   29. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta25:40

       (laughs) .

   30. JRJoe Rogan25:40

       You don't... It's not a good way to communicate, right?
7. 27:11 – 31:36

   Vaccines in real life: clotting fears, COVID as vascular disease, and nuanced risk

   1. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta27:11

      I think, I think the question is when people raise these issues, are they, are they trying to start shit or are they actually having a, a... do they have a legitimate question? I had this, I had this guy, Joe, the other day who, who, um... our air conditioning broke at the house and this guy comes over to the house to fix it. (clears throat) Nice guy. Probably in his mid-70s. He has a mask on. He goes and fixes the air conditioning and when he's walking, I'm walking him out, and I don't know if he knows who I am or anything, but it turns out that he does and he says, "Hey, you mind if I ask you a question?" I said, "Sure." He says, "Do you think I should get the vaccine?" This is just a few weeks ago, okay? I said, "Yeah, I think you should get the vaccine." And he says, "Well, the reason I ask is because I got this, um, stent, you know, in one of the blood vessels and, uh, I'm worried about clotting." And I said, "Oh, yeah. Well, there was some news reports about clotting. I can see why you'd think that way, um, but here's the thing, you know. Your risk of clotting is, as it turns out, 80 times higher from the disease COVID rather than from the vaccine." That's just-

   2. JRJoe Rogan28:13

      80 times?

   3. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta28:14

      80 times. Really, you know, the, the clotting risk was primarily among post-menopausal women and it was primarily the adenoviral, the, the, um, Johnson & Johnson type vaccines. You didn't really see it in the, in the, um, mRNA vaccines like Pfizer and Moderna, but the, the, the risk is there. But clotting is a real concern with this disease, which is weird, to the point where some people say we shouldn't even call this a respiratory disease as much as a vascular disease.

   4. JRJoe Rogan28:39

      Yeah, I've read that.

   5. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta28:40

      Which I think is really... I mean, this is... we're learning here. I mean, this is a novel virus. We don't get to see that very often. A novel... people focus on the word virus, but the word novel is really important here. I mean, when is the last time you did something for the first time? When's the last time you experienced something for the first time? What happens when you, uh... when you have something novel, what you automatically do is you bring your own worldview to it, right? Coronavirus from China. "Oh, well, that's gonna be like SARS. I remember SARS back in 2003. This is gonna behave like that." So you automatically put this in that box. Wrong box to put it in. "Oh, it's looking like a pandemic. I'm gonna put this in the H1N1 box. That was the last pandemic in 2009." Uh, that would have been the wrong box as well. This thing didn't have a box of its own. It behaved totally differently. So, but, but the, the air conditioning guy, you know, he, he's worried about the clotting.

   6. JRJoe Rogan29:34

      Mm-hmm.

   7. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta29:34

      And I tell him this and he says... he thanks me and he says, "Well, I, I really appreciate that. Um, I've been trying to get an answer on this and part of the reason why is my daughter died last week of COVID." This is my air conditioning guy telling me this, okay?

   8. JRJoe Rogan29:48

      How old is he?

   9. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta29:49

      He's like mid-70s, so... which, I mean, yeah, it was just hard, you know. Somebody tells you his daughter died and he's, you know, he's... And it's a week later and he's working again, which in and of itself was like, "I don't think I could do that, go back to work." I mean, he was grieving still.

   10. JRJoe Rogan30:04

       Yeah.

   11. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta30:04

       And his daughter died and they weren't vaccinated. Now, they don't... they're not following the news reports. They're not... I mean, he's, they're working. They, they got their lives and it's not something that they, uh, like, "This is the hill I'm gonna die on as far as vaccines." Uh, they're not those people.

   12. JRJoe Rogan30:18

       Mm-hmm.

   13. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta30:19

       They're just living their lives. But she says to him before she goes on the ventilator, "Please get vaccinated." And, and then she dies. And, and so he's now telling me that he wants to get vaccinated, but he's worried about these clots.

   14. JRJoe Rogan30:31

       Mm-hmm.

   15. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta30:31

       He's been calling his doctor's office. He hasn't gotten a call back yet, and I'm the first person he has seen since this all happened, the first doctor he's seen. And so he asks me and I tell him and, you, you know, uh, am I gonna get pissed off at the anti-vaxxers after spending time with that guy? No, I'm not. Because there are some who are, going back to the same thing, some who are just starting... want to start shit. They're just trying to sow chaos and doubt and... for no good reason. Chaos is the, the metric, as you've talked about on your podcast. But this guy, he wa- he wants to do it. He understands the consequences of not. He just watched what happened to his daughter. He's worried about a stent in his leg. There's all these things and we've got to communicate that to people. If we're gonna ask the country to do something, if you're gonna ask the country to get vaxxed, if you're gonna ask the country to get boosters, which is the most recent thing, you've got to explain it well. If you're gonna ask kids to get vaccinated, why?... why are you asking kids? 'Cause everyone says, "Well, aren't they f- far less likely to, to get sick and, and all that?" Yes. But here's why they should get vaccinated. I mean-

8. 31:36 – 44:34

   Kids, myocarditis, and the risk-reward fight: what counts as a fair comparison?

   1. JRJoe Rogan31:36

      Why do you think kids should get vaccinated?

   2. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta31:38

      Well, I think, I think there's a few reasons. First of all, they can't-

   3. JRJoe Rogan31:40

      Young children?

   4. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta31:42

      Yeah.

   5. JRJoe Rogan31:42

      Like how old?

   6. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta31:44

      You know, I mean, I think the, the, we'll probably see a vaccine authorized for 5 to 11-year-olds.

   7. JRJoe Rogan31:48

      Do we have real studies on the impact of young children and COVID?

   8. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta31:52

      In terms of what it, what COVID does-

   9. JRJoe Rogan31:53

      Yeah.

   10. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta31:53

       ... to their bodies?

   11. JRJoe Rogan31:55

       Yeah.

   12. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta31:55

       Uh, we, we know that they're far less likely to get sick.

   13. JRJoe Rogan31:59

       Right.

   14. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta31:59

       That's for sure. Uh-

   15. JRJoe Rogan32:00

       Far less likely to be hospitalized.

   16. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta32:02

       Far less likely, yes.

   17. JRJoe Rogan32:02

       Far less likely to die.

   18. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta32:03

       Yep.

   19. JRJoe Rogan32:04

       And far less likely to die from COVID than even from the flu, correct?

   20. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta32:07

       That could be. You know, I mean, flu is, is a concern for sure. 60,000-

   21. JRJoe Rogan32:11

       Yeah.

   22. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta32:11

       ... people die of flu every year.

   23. JRJoe Rogan32:13

       But it's more dangerous for children than COVID is, correct?

   24. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta32:15

       I th- I think when you looked at, like, H, uh, H, uh, 1N1, you know, the, the, um-

   25. JRJoe Rogan32:20

       That's a different one, right?

   26. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta32:21

       It's a, that was a bad flu. But I think, you know, like, in any given year, I think, what, some 500 children have died of COVID? In any given year, you know, you may have, um, similar numbers of flu. It's, it's, so death rates, yes.

   27. JRJoe Rogan32:32

       I think the children that died from COVID, most of them had pretty extreme comorbidities, though, correct?

   28. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta32:39

       Yes. And, and same for adults. And that is a good conversation to have.

   29. JRJoe Rogan32:44

       Yeah.

   30. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta32:44

       And, you know?
9. 44:34 – 1:12:29

   Boosters, waning immunity, and politics vs agencies: who should announce science?

   1. JRJoe Rogan44:34

      Th- this is within what time period of the vaccine, right? Because the vaccine immunity supposedly wanes over time-

   2. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta44:42

      Yes.

   3. JRJoe Rogan44:43

      ... which is the argument for the boosters.

   4. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta44:44

      That's right.

   5. JRJoe Rogan44:45

      So, like, what, how much of a time period are we looking at here?

   6. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta44:47

      The, I mean, there's, there's new data coming in-

   7. JRJoe Rogan44:49

      Where you're having eight times the ability to fight it off that-

   8. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta44:51

      So, now they're saying that, you know, six to eight months after the vaccine, there's some evidence that against mild infection, the vaccine's, uh, effectiveness wanes, which probably means you're more likely to get infected. So, that's, that's probably, that's probably the case. So, it's not indefinite, and I think that's part of the reason they're recommending boosters for some people. But-

   9. JRJoe Rogan45:10

      You say, "But they." Who is they? Because the FDA just declined the recommendation of boosters, and the two top people resigned-

   10. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta45:18

       Well-

   11. JRJoe Rogan45:18

       ... because they didn't think that the science was there to recommend boosters, right?

   12. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta45:22

       They, they, they recommend it for people over 65, people who ha- who are, have vulnerable, you know, because of preexisting conditions, things like, people who they think will get quite sick if they were to get a breakthrough infection. If, so look at it this way, if you look at the number of people hospitalized with COVID in the country, 95% of them are unvaccinated. So, who are the 5%-

   13. JRJoe Rogan45:42

       Is that real?

   14. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta45:43

       That's, that, you know, it's different in different places, but 90% plus in most places.

   15. JRJoe Rogan45:46

       We were just discussing that, and I mean, that was a, there was a study that was out of England, and then there was another one out of Israel where a large percentage of them-

   16. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta45:55

       Yes.

   17. JRJoe Rogan45:55

       ... the great, great number of them.

   18. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta45:57

       In Israel, that's right. And, and, and that's, it's really interesting, but you gotta remember something, though, Joe, is that once you start getting the vast majority of people vaccinated in a society, then the, the total number of people who show up in the hospital with COVID are likely to be vaccinated.

   19. JRJoe Rogan46:12

       Right, because a greater percentage of the people-

   20. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta46:13

       It's a much smaller number.

   21. JRJoe Rogan46:14

       ... are vaccinated, yeah.

   22. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta46:15

       It's a much smaller absolute number, but, like, if you have a lot of people who are showing up in the hospital, over 100,000 at one point, you know, in this country that are in the hospital with COVID, 90% plus were unvaccinated. Now, once we get to a higher vaccination level or a higher immunity level, the ratio will flip just because more people will be vaccinated.

   23. JRJoe Rogan46:34

       Right, 'cause we have a greater percentage of people vaccinated.

   24. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta46:35

       We have a greater percentage. But I think the question they were asking as part of this booster discussion is who are the 5% that are s- that are vaccinated and still get sick enough to end up in the hospital? And what they found was that they tended to be older, they tended to be people with certain preexisting conditions. They had already made a determination that people who were immune-compromised, uh, should, should get a booster shot. So, there, there was all these various things. They did not do, you're right, a- a- a across-the-board recommendation for everyone to get boosters. They don't think the data is there to sort of support that yet. They think the vaccines do work pretty well for people who aren't vulnerable for these reasons.

   25. JRJoe Rogan47:12

       And then the two people resigned?

   26. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta47:14

       Two people resigned because I think-

   27. JRJoe Rogan47:15

       Because they felt that they were being pressured to... Why did they resign?

   28. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta47:20

       I, I-

   29. JRJoe Rogan47:20

       They resigned over the boosters, correct?

   30. SGDr. Sanjay Gupta47:22

       Yeah, I, yeah. I think you can safely say that, because-

Episode duration: 3:08:39