Joe Rogan Experience #1779 - Michael Osterholm

1. 0:00 – 15:00

   (drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast,…

   1. MOMichael Osterholm0:00

      (drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience.

   2. JRJoe Rogan0:06

      Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night. All day. (instrumental music) Dr. Osterholm, welcome back.

   3. MOMichael Osterholm0:14

      Thank you very much, Joe.

   4. JRJoe Rogan0:15

      Very good to see you again.

   5. MOMichael Osterholm0:16

      Good to see you.

   6. JRJoe Rogan0:16

      It's been basically two years, uh, from the day. And I think when you were on the podcast, for a lot of my friends, that was the first real fear that they felt about the pandemic. You scared the shit out of a lot of people.

   7. MOMichael Osterholm0:30

      (smacks lips) Well, you know, my job is not to scare anyone out of their wits. It's to scare them into their wits.

   8. JRJoe Rogan0:35

      Ah.

   9. MOMichael Osterholm0:35

      And to do what they can to, uh, deal with the situation. As you know, at that time, March 10 of 2020, no one wanted to believe this was going to be a pandemic. And so-

   10. JRJoe Rogan0:45

       Yeah, there was a lot of denial about how it was gonna play out, and people were thinking that it was inflated or it was not that big of a deal. And then, like I said, when you came on the podcast, that, like I got a bunch of calls from friends, like going, "Jesus."

   11. MOMichael Osterholm1:00

       (smacks lips) Yeah, I think the understanding of where we've been, where we're at, and where we're going still I think isn't really completely clear.

   12. JRJoe Rogan1:07

       (smacks lips) Yeah, where we're going in particular, right? Now, um, as an infectious disease expert, it's very rare that you have an opportunity during your lifetime, during your career to examine a pandemic and to be through it and examine the responses to the pandemic. You know, h- how, when you look back at it, what mistakes do you think were made and what do you think was done correctly?

   13. MOMichael Osterholm1:36

       (smacks lips) Well, first of all, let me just say that one of the things I think has been missing from a lot of the response that we've had so far is an incredible sense of humility.

   14. JRJoe Rogan1:48

       Humility.

   15. MOMichael Osterholm1:49

       Every day when I get up, the first thing I do is I look over at my nightstand and I see this crystal ball. It has five inches of caked mud on it, and I try to scrape it off (laughs) and then decide what do I know for the rest of the day. And I think that we've had far too many answers before we really had the answers. And while we always wanna use that term, quote, follow the science, I think we didn't do a good job sharing with the public and even within ourselves what did we really know and not know, and what did we have to do to learn more? So I'd say it's humility.

   16. JRJoe Rogan2:21

       Uh, do you think that it's overwhelming, like the, the reason... Is there a reason why they didn't do a good job sharing the information with the public? And do you think that some of that might be just the fact that being involved in something w- th- that has such a massive footprint, something that literally-

   17. MOMichael Osterholm2:40

       Mm-hmm.

   18. JRJoe Rogan2:40

       ... overwhelmed the entire planet Earth, that there's so many variables, there's so many things to deal with, there's so many things to manage, that that became part of the problem?

   19. MOMichael Osterholm2:51

       Well, you know, Joe, I think that, uh, if I had to look at it, there were days that I felt like I was trying to plant my petunias in a Category 5 hurricane.

   20. JRJoe Rogan2:59

       (laughs)

   21. MOMichael Osterholm2:59

       I mean, it was just one of those situations where there was so much going on. Look at the politicization.

   22. JRJoe Rogan3:04

       Yeah.

   23. MOMichael Osterholm3:04

       Look at the, the misinformation/disinformation. I mean, look at the debates. They often weren't really about the substantive issues of what was happening. And so we had a lot of these countercurrent issues, and the question was what do we really know or not know about this virus? I mean, I'm sure there are people after I'm on here today that are not gonna be happy at all with what I have to say, because I don't think we're done yet. And as I said a year ago right now, a year ago right now, when the world was basically seeing the curve come down from that early January peak and vaccines were flowing that we were done, everyone wanted a declared independence from COVID. And I said, "No, I think the darkest days of the pandemic could still be ahead of us because of variants." These variants are really challenging. We don't know what they're gonna do. They're kinda like 10, 110-mile-an-hour curveballs. And so I think that even going forward, we surely are in a better place right now, and we're gonna be this for a while. But I don't know what the next variant's gonna bring. And will it evade immune protection? Will it mean that the antibody, the immune response we've had so far, the vaccine protection we've had so far, what will it be like with the next variant? I don't know that. Maybe it's going to be fine. Maybe we're gonna see it become a regular old flu-like illness every year, but maybe not. And I think that that's the challenge we have is that kind of humility to say we don't know. And that's what's been a real problem trying to help the public understand it, because we've had far too many answers when we really didn't.

   24. JRJoe Rogan4:33

       There's an inclination to think that because Omicron is so much more mild than Delta, that this is where the direction of the virus is going. Is that correct?

   25. MOMichael Osterholm4:44

       That is the sense. But there's a couple of assumptions there that I think really deserve comment. Number one, the term it's a milder disease was really unfortunate in the sense that it gave everybody the sense that across the population, it's a milder disease. If you actually look at what happened, let's say you had 1,000 cases of Delta and 100 of them would show up in the hospitals, have severe illness, and die. Some of them would die. Well then along comes Omicron, instead of 100, only 10 people get serious illness or hospitalized, and you say this is a much milder disease. The problem was you have 20 times as many cases occur. So actually, your healthcare systems are much more overwhelmed. I mean, it wasn't just the total number of cases. It was the severe cases. And the last 12 weeks have been among the most severest weeks of the pandemic. And it's just because the sheer number. And so I think that that's one thing. First of all, this was a mild disease for a lot of people, but for a whole lot more, it wasn't.... I think number two is the fact that, uh, you know, we don't know what these variants are gonna do. They could be milder again. But, you know, we're in a very amazing place right now with the virus, where when you look at its original source, from a human to another human, uh, e- early on in Wuhan, but, you know, it had to come from an animal of, of, at some point. Well, now, we're seeing all kinds of animal species infected with this virus. Look at what it's doing with white-tailed deer.

   26. JRJoe Rogan6:07

       Mm-hmm.

   27. MOMichael Osterholm6:07

       I mean, in my 46 years in the business, I've never seen data like I've watched the emergence of this new variant, uh, in, in wild deer.

   28. JRJoe Rogan6:15

       Yeah, it's very strange, right?

   29. MOMichael Osterholm6:16

       I mean, it's-

   30. JRJoe Rogan6:16

       Yes, some, in some places, as many as 50% of the deer have antibodies.
2. 15:00 – 30:00

   Right. …

   1. MOMichael Osterholm15:00

      but this is, I think, the message here, is this is what we have to continue to be mindful of. I know everybody wants me to say today we're done, and I hope we're done. But as I said just a moment ago, hope's not a strategy.

   2. JRJoe Rogan15:12

      Right.

   3. MOMichael Osterholm15:12

      I think that we could still see the emergence of new variants that could challenge the immunity that we have already, which is what makes this virus so difficult and so different than we've had before. When you see influenza, pandemic influenza occurs because a bird virus finally evolves out of the bird, gets into particularly a pig, because a pig has lung s- has receptor cells for both human viruses and bird viruses. And when they get into a pig cell in particular, they combine, they mix up, uh, the flu viruses are very promiscuous, and they come out with this brand new strain that causes the next pandemic. Well, when that spillover occurs into humans, that's kind of the s- the seminal event. The rest of it emerges pretty much in humans. We don't necessarily see us go- giving it back to the animals, they give it back to us, we give it to the animals, they give it back to us. With, looking at SARS-CoV-2 and the, and this particular coronavirus, we don't know what it's gonna do. Is it gonna go back and forth between animals? I mean, I could line, list an entire set of all the animals that are now infected with this virus.

   4. JRJoe Rogan16:13

      Hmm.

   5. MOMichael Osterholm16:13

      And we don't know what that means.

   6. JRJoe Rogan16:15

      The first ones that we found that trans- transmit from humans to animals, or back to, in, in terms of SARS-CoV-2, was it ferrets? Like, what was the first animal that they discovered that, uh, humans can infect and they can infect us with this?

   7. MOMichael Osterholm16:30

      Well, there was, uh, game animals, mink and so forth, in-

   8. JRJoe Rogan16:33

      Minks.

   9. MOMichael Osterholm16:34

      ... Europe that we saw that. But it became clear because we started seeing zoo animals infected.

   10. JRJoe Rogan16:38

       Right.

   11. MOMichael Osterholm16:39

       Just, just this past week, we've heard about lowland gorillas.

   12. JRJoe Rogan16:41

       Cats and stuff, yeah.

   13. MOMichael Osterholm16:42

       Cats. We've seen dogs and cats in people's homes where there were cases, and they got the white-tailed deer. I, I think there's a whole number of animal species where ultimately they could be infected with this virus, and the trillion-dollar question we don't know. Will that, in any way, shape, or form contribute to a, a spillback moment into humans with a new virus that, again, will challenge our immune systems, challenge our protection, and what does that mean? And we just don't know.

   14. JRJoe Rogan17:07

       Is that the term they use biolo- or, uh, animal reservoir?

   15. MOMichael Osterholm17:10

       Yes, absolutely. That's it.

   16. JRJoe Rogan17:12

       So, that's, um, any other animal that can catch it. Now, is that, is it-

   17. MOMichael Osterholm17:15

       Well, catch it and keep it going inside them. So, if, sometimes an animal may get an infection from us and it's terminal. It ends. It d- doesn't keep going in the animal population. But as we just talked about, the white-tailed deer, clearly there, the virus is ongoing with transmission in the deer population itself.

   18. JRJoe Rogan17:31

       Are there any examples of an animal being infected and then s- like, from a human, like, a human giving it to their cat, for instance, and then the cat giving it to another human?

   19. MOMichael Osterholm17:42

       (inhales deeply) You know, it's-... unclear. A- and when I say unclear, there was surely some data looking at the game farms, where it was thought that some of the transmission was from human to animal, animal back to human.

   20. JRJoe Rogan17:52

       When you say game farms, are you talking-

   21. MOMichael Osterholm17:53

       Yeah.

   22. JRJoe Rogan17:53

       ... about, like, captive COVID?

   23. MOMichael Osterholm17:55

       Cap- cap- talk- in this, in this case-

   24. JRJoe Rogan17:57

       Uh, captive, uh, survey, rather?

   25. MOMichael Osterholm17:57

       In this game, what we're talking about are primarily fur-bearing animals for pelts.

   26. JRJoe Rogan18:01

       Okay.

   27. MOMichael Osterholm18:02

       You know, the mink, f- ferrets, that type of animal species.

   28. JRJoe Rogan18:05

       So that's where they first started to see the transmission into-

   29. MOMichael Osterholm18:07

       Well, the- it's suspected.

   30. JRJoe Rogan18:08

       Okay.
3. 30:00 – 45:00

   Is there proof that…

   1. MOMichael Osterholm30:00

      I'm open to it, I'm willing to it. I have said time and time again, I wish that there... Chinese would allow for an exhaustive, uh, outside review of what happened there, to corroborate all these pieces of information or basically, uh, show that they're not true, and I think that would put us all in a better place of trying to move forward.

   2. JRJoe Rogan30:20

      Is there proof that they deleted evidence?

   3. MOMichael Osterholm30:23

      I don't have any proof of that. I, I would... I don't know.

   4. JRJoe Rogan30:26

      You don't know?

   5. MOMichael Osterholm30:26

      I don't know.

   6. JRJoe Rogan30:27

      Um, if there was proof that a lot of files were deleted, would y- would that give you pause?

   7. MOMichael Osterholm30:32

      Well, I'd wanna know why.

   8. JRJoe Rogan30:33

      Right.

   9. MOMichael Osterholm30:33

      You know, we delete files all the time on research things after things are completed.

   10. JRJoe Rogan30:37

       Mm-hmm.

   11. MOMichael Osterholm30:37

       Now, on the other hand, laboratories typically are, uh... keep everything forever because they can... may have to go back to it-

   12. JRJoe Rogan30:44

       Right.

   13. MOMichael Osterholm30:44

       ... at a later date. So, you know, I, I can't comment on that other than to say, that should be pieces of evidence or pieces of investigation that would address that.

   14. JRJoe Rogan30:53

       Now, uh, one of the things I think that you said early on in the pandemic was, you didn't think that it would, uh... that it had emerged from a lab. You thought it was a natural spillover, just simply because of the design of the virus itself, that we wouldn't design something like that.

   15. MOMichael Osterholm31:09

       Yeah, and I still say that's, that's the case. I mean, this thing is so effective at infecting humans-

   16. JRJoe Rogan31:15

       Mm-hmm.

   17. MOMichael Osterholm31:16

       ... and it only got better over time. Think what it did in Mother Nature since the first Omicron or since the first, uh, variant occurred up to Omicron, and you can see, it just got better and better at infecting humans without any hand of a manmade event. And so this thing was an evolving virus right from the start that was basically capable of infecting humans and got better at infecting humans as time went on.

   18. JRJoe Rogan31:38

       So the accusations or the people that think that it was made in a lab, how do they think that something like that would be created and why do you think that that's not the case?

   19. MOMichael Osterholm31:50

       Well, again, this is out of my sphere of expertise.

   20. JRJoe Rogan31:52

       Okay.

   21. MOMichael Osterholm31:52

       I am not the person who can tell you from a genetic standpoint how to manipulate this virus, what to do it. As an epidemiologist, I can tell you, you know, I've seen these other spillover events. I've been very involved with investigating SARS-

   22. JRJoe Rogan32:04

       Right.

   23. MOMichael Osterholm32:04

       ... back in 2003 when it first emerged in China, spread around the world. I've been very involved with the work with MERS, the Middle Eastern respiratory syndrome, another coronavirus. And in each one of those, you can show clearly the spillover event from animals to humans.

   24. JRJoe Rogan32:20

       Mm-hmm.

   25. MOMichael Osterholm32:20

       In fact, with the camels being the main reservoir for MERS in the Arabian Peninsula, we keep having MERS cases because nobody's gonna put down all these camels, you know? We're not gonna get rid of 'em. And so we watch those spillovers occur from time to time into humans. So coronaviruses emerging out of an animal reservoir in and of themselves are not unusual. It's not somehow like A plus B plus C plus miracle ended up with the answer. So I, I haven't seen anything that would tell me that that was any different than that. But again, I'm wide open to whatever new data can come forward, and I hope we do exhaustively look at this.

   26. JRJoe Rogan32:57

       Now, when they perform gain-of-function research, can you... d- can you explain how that's done? Th- they're, they're using different coronaviruses and, and various viruses and infecting human respiratory tissue, and they're also doing experiments on ferrets because they have very similar ACE2 receptors to human beings, right?

   27. MOMichael Osterholm33:19

       Yeah.

   28. JRJoe Rogan33:20

       Is that the case?

   29. MOMichael Osterholm33:20

       I can't comment on what research they're doing. I don't know.

   30. JRJoe Rogan33:23

       You don't know?
4. 45:00 – 1:00:00

   Mm-hmm. …

   1. MOMichael Osterholm45:00

      the, and the question you asked me earlier about the issue with Omicron, you know, why do we see so many infections out there? Well, 'cause it's much more infectious. Um, and I think that what we're watching here is a really real-time evolution (laughs) of a virus that, you know, we could never, you know, suggest for a moment that the measles virus is gonna change a whole lot in two years. It hasn't changed basically in decades and decades and decades. So I think this is one of the challenges we have is th- and when I answered your question earlier about what is the future of this pandemic, it's 'cause this virus keeps throwing 10, 200 10-mile-an-hour curveballs at us.

   2. JRJoe Rogan45:34

      Mm-hmm.

   3. MOMichael Osterholm45:34

      I don't know what the future's gonna bring yet. Maybe one of these variants is gonna spin out of this that is gonna again cause various, uh, a large number of cases, some of it severe, and is gonna evade the immune protection that we have already.

   4. JRJoe Rogan45:50

      I've read some articles that seem to indicate that there, uh, there may be some immunity that certain people have because of previous infection for other coronaviruses.

   5. MOMichael Osterholm46:02

      Yep.

   6. JRJoe Rogan46:02

      Other coronaviruses meaning common coronaviruses.

   7. MOMichael Osterholm46:05

      Yep, yep.

   8. JRJoe Rogan46:05

      That somehow or another that may have imparted some, at least some kind of either immunity or some kind of protection from SARS-CoV-2.

   9. MOMichael Osterholm46:17

      And that is currently being studied. And in fact, if you look at the issue of just take immunity from SARS-CoV-2, if you look at the data for D- Delta, you could actually show that basically those people who had previous infection did better than those who hadn't had previous infection and were vaccinated. Mean, they actually had more protection. But if you go back to Alpha, people who had previously been infected were more likely to get re-infected than people who were vaccinated.

   10. JRJoe Rogan46:53

       So people who caught the Alpha variant could catch it again?

   11. MOMichael Osterholm46:57

       Yes. Well, everybody. Look at Delta. Uh, Delta's the same way. People... We know-

   12. JRJoe Rogan47:01

       We've got Delta more than once?

   13. MOMichael Osterholm47:02

       Oh, well, it's n- I'm sorry. I'm talking about when they actually had the next variant. So people have, who had had Alpha did get Delta.

   14. JRJoe Rogan47:10

       Hm.

   15. MOMichael Osterholm47:10

       People who had Delta got Omicron. And it's really too early for us to say what happens with BA1, BA2. Can you get Omicron a second time? We don't know yet.

   16. JRJoe Rogan47:19

       Mm.

   17. MOMichael Osterholm47:20

       But so when I was talking about for the Alpha issue, we were talking about people who'd previously been infected with the ancestral variant. Now actually with Alpha, we're basically more likely to be protected by vaccine than previous infection. For Delta, if you had Delta, basically you were less likely to be protected from vaccine and more so from previous infection. And so what it's pointing out is this is a fluid situation and, and we're still trying to learn with Omicron. We had a lot of breakthrough infections with Omicron. You know, what was it that protected you or didn't protect you, uh, with Omicron and, and, uh, we're still really looking at that issue.

   18. JRJoe Rogan48:01

       And that is with people that have been previously infected, as well as people who have been vaccinated with Omicron, correct?

   19. MOMichael Osterholm48:07

       Right, right. So, if you, if you look at just hospitalization alone, if you were unvaccinated, you had about a 79.6 per 100,000 people were hospitalized. If you were fully vaccinated, it was only 4.4%, okay?

   20. JRJoe Rogan48:21

       So, 79 people out of 100,000 were-

   21. MOMichael Osterholm48:24

       Were-

   22. JRJoe Rogan48:24

       ... were hospitalized-

   23. MOMichael Osterholm48:25

       If you were unvaccinated-

   24. JRJoe Rogan48:26

       ... or unvaccinated?

   25. MOMichael Osterholm48:26

       ... and it was 4.4 if you were, in fact, previously vaccinated.

   26. JRJoe Rogan48:31

       Four people? 4.4 people-

   27. MOMichael Osterholm48:33

       Four, about-

   28. JRJoe Rogan48:33

       ... versus 79 people?

   29. MOMichael Osterholm48:34

       ... uh, 100,000 people. Yep, yep. Right.

   30. JRJoe Rogan48:35

       So, uh, the, a lot of people thought it was a lot higher than that. Like, uh, there was an impression that, uh, when you got infected by SARS-CoV-2, that there was, whi- whichever variant-
5. 1:00:00 – 1:15:00

   Right. …

   1. MOMichael Osterholm1:00:00

      part of our ongoing efforts with COVID, is just the study of and trying to understand what's happening. First of all, as you pointed out, we have to know why you're having these findings. What's going on?

   2. JRJoe Rogan1:00:11

      Right.

   3. MOMichael Osterholm1:00:11

      And then once we do that, what can you do about it? What k- what kinda treatments could be effective? And giving people hope, because I've seen people who at, 12 months after their COVID infection, who are feeling like they've kinda lost their life. They, they, they don't have the energy to go to work. They don't have the energy to be with family. Um, and this, this is really a challenge.

   4. JRJoe Rogan1:00:34

      And, um, have you read anything about hyperbaric therapy-

   5. MOMichael Osterholm1:00:38

      (inhales deeply) I-

   6. JRJoe Rogan1:00:39

      ... in relation to recovery from this?

   7. MOMichael Osterholm1:00:41

      I haven't.

   8. JRJoe Rogan1:00:41

      You haven't?

   9. MOMichael Osterholm1:00:42

      No.

   10. JRJoe Rogan1:00:43

       Have you read anything about ... Is there anything else that stands out, like stem cells or anything that they seem to think would be effective?

   11. MOMichael Osterholm1:00:49

       I think right now, uh, it's in that stage of just trying to define what it is.

   12. JRJoe Rogan1:00:54

       Mm-hmm.

   13. MOMichael Osterholm1:00:54

       You know, before they can even know necessarily the interventions that they can look at. You know, what are the markers? How is your immune system operating? Do you have evidence of certain immune markers that are elevated? Uh, you know, why might you have, uh, some evidence of some heart involvement or your lung involvement? So, part of it is, right now, just taking very seriously that long COVID really exists, and that we're trying to figure out, first and foremost, what might be the mechanisms that are causing it. And then I think you're gonna see, uh, a, a large number of efforts trying to address treatment itself.

   14. JRJoe Rogan1:01:27

       So, it's still ongoing.

   15. MOMichael Osterholm1:01:29

       Still ongoing, absolutely. And, uh, you know, one of the things that's going to be a challenge is to find out how many of the people who had Omicron, even in their mildest stages, that go on to develop long COVID. We don't know that yet.

   16. JRJoe Rogan1:01:39

       It's such a strange term, long COVID.

   17. MOMichael Osterholm1:01:42

       I know, yeah. (laughs)

   18. JRJoe Rogan1:01:42

       You know, because it's like you don't really have COVID. Your, your COVID is done, but you have the deterioration of your, uh, your physical abilities.

   19. MOMichael Osterholm1:01:50

       Yes.

   20. JRJoe Rogan1:01:51

       Yeah. Very strange, right?

   21. MOMichael Osterholm1:01:54

       Yeah.

   22. JRJoe Rogan1:01:54

       Is there, is there no disease that's like that?

   23. MOMichael Osterholm1:01:55

       Well, you know, we saw it again, as I said, with chronic fatigue syndrome.

   24. JRJoe Rogan1:01:57

       Right.

   25. MOMichael Osterholm1:01:57

       You know, that's a term that many people have, uh, had to suffer with for years and years and years. And, you know, we didn't have the major research initiatives around that, that I think COVID now is drawing the resources towards. And hopefully, you know, people who have that condition also can be, uh, helped by learning what, what did COVID do, why did COVID cause this?

   26. JRJoe Rogan1:02:21

       Um, are there any ... Uh, th- uh, I know there's some new, uh, treatments that are on the horizon that Merck has and that Pfizer has. There's a bunch of different, uh, antiviral medications and pills that they're putting forth. Is there anything else that's ... I think there's also ... Isn't there an attenuated vaccine, a attenuated form of the virus?

   27. MOMichael Osterholm1:02:42

       Yeah. Well, first of all, let me just say, I think the treatment area right now is, um, a very exciting time and development. Um, you know, I look back to my work in the early 1980s in HIV/AIDS, and at that time, a diagnosis of HIV was a death sentence, simply a death sentence. And with the emergence of drug therapies, even in the absence of a vaccine, we've taken HIV for many people to a managed chronic disease. And I think that, you know, as we look at the vaccines, it's clear we have challenges with waning immunity, how well will they work, how many booster doses can you give, et cetera. And so vaccines remain really the foundational response for dealing with COVID, but I think the drug therapies are gonna become really, really critical. And we're learning more. I mean, for example, I know a topic that you have, uh, been of interest about in the, the show, that ivermectin. You know, there are five big trials going on right now, they're gonna be announced, the results, in the next weeks to months, that really have looked carefully at ivermectin, including high-dose ivermectin. And, you know, I've, again, as a scientist, reserved judgment. You know, I didn't close my mind and say, "No, yes, whatever." I want the data, and we gotta have these double-blind, placebo-controlled trials. You know, studies where neither the investigator or the patient know which they got, you know, and then objectively find out what's happening. I think there's a whole series of drugs coming down from several companies that surely have that potential if given very early, and the one you mentioned from Pfizer, for example, uh, Paxlovid, while it has some contraindications with underlying health conditions that might already exist, on a whole, it is really a very, very fantastic drug. But the problem we have right now with that is that we have many, many places in this country where during the surge of Omicron, I couldn't get tested for three, four or five days. And-

   28. JRJoe Rogan1:04:39

       Why is that?

   29. MOMichael Osterholm1:04:40

       Because we just didn't have the testing capacity.

   30. JRJoe Rogan1:04:42

       But doesn't that seem ... That seems like something that would be much more easily-
6. 1:15:00 – 1:15:38

   Wait, I'm, I'm confused.…

   1. MOMichael Osterholm1:15:00

      issues of health and it's a program that was started outta the University of Maryland and it's been fascinating of how it's actually having a really positive impact on health. But they do kind of like what you do, talk about all the health issues, not just-

   2. JRJoe Rogan1:15:12

      Wait, I'm, I'm confused. So, you're saying there's a program to educate barbers to talk to their clients?

   3. MOMichael Osterholm1:15:17

      There actually is and then they actually look at the outcome in their clients and they've been able to demonstrate major increases in people getting vaccinated-

   4. JRJoe Rogan1:15:26

      Mm-hmm.

   5. MOMichael Osterholm1:15:26

      ... people seeking out screening for cancer issues, et cetera, because the barbers use that time when you're sitting in the chair, or the stylists, to talk about health.

   6. JRJoe Rogan1:15:35

      So, how are they doing this? Through seminars? Like, how are they educating these people?

Episode duration: 2:28:43