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Oct. 12, 2021 - The Joe Rogan Experience
03:21:02
Joe Rogan Experience #1717 - Alex Berenson
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alex berenson
02:06:33
j
joe rogan
01:06:04
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jamie vernon
01:14
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andy stumpf
00:01
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keith olbermann
00:18
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unidentified
Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out!
The Joe Rogan Experience.
Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day.
alex berenson
Hello, Joe.
joe rogan
What's it like to be in Twitter jail?
Well, you're not even in Twitter jail.
You're like excommunicado.
alex berenson
I'm banned.
joe rogan
You're banned.
For telling the truth.
alex berenson
For telling the truth.
joe rogan
That's what the fascinating thing is.
Everything that you were banned for is verifiable.
There's sources.
You could go read those sources.
I watched the whole process go down.
I don't understand.
alex berenson
Yeah.
Well, I'm not a naive guy, but I thought that being right would actually help, and it turns out being right hurts.
joe rogan
Well, during this incredibly confusing time where people are more hysterical and more freaked out and anxiety-filled than I've ever seen people in all of my 54 years of life, this is the peak.
This is post 9-11 peak.
9-11 was a big anxiety moment for people, but at least it brought us all together.
This, because of whatever it is, whether it's social media algorithms or it's just the inevitable decline of an empire, whatever the fuck it is, we have hit a weird place right now.
alex berenson
Yes.
You know, I would say The people who were sort of very complacent about vaccinations and being vaccinated in the spring are now very angry.
But they're angry at the wrong people.
Somehow they're blaming people who are not vaccinated.
They should be blaming Pfizer and the lies that the CDC told them.
joe rogan
Well, what's really interesting is almost no anger at the lab in Wuhan.
alex berenson
That's true, too.
joe rogan
Very strange.
Almost no anger.
Almost none.
It's almost like an inconvenient truth that most likely this virus emerged from a lab.
I mean, Sagar and Jetty from Breaking Points broke down exactly when it went down, who were the initial people that got infected, how it most likely spread.
It's been documented by Josh Dubin extensively, the involvement.
Of Fauci, the NIH, the EcoHealth Alliance, all of the input, all of the deceptive public statements contrasted to the internal emails that showed a real concern that they might be responsible for it, a real concern that gain-of-function research might have been the cause of this, and no anger at that, but anger at people who are Unvaccinated.
Even people who are unvaccinated and healthy.
Even people who have taken care of their body their entire life.
Exercised, ate right, take vitamins.
People who are fit and who don't want to take a chance with anything else.
alex berenson
Yeah.
I mean, it's funny you mentioned the lab leak.
So, you know, I now have this Substack, which is sort of my inadequate effort to replace Twitter.
joe rogan
Tell people how to get to that, by the way.
alex berenson
Sure.
So, Substack is Substack.com.
Substack is essentially a newsletter service and a hosting service, and they have guaranteed free expression.
That's what they've said.
They've said they're not going to censor.
I have to choose to believe them on that.
I believed in Twitter for a while.
That confidence was clearly misplaced.
But Substack says they're not going to censor me or other people, and I've got to hope that's true.
joe rogan
How many people do you have on your Substack?
alex berenson
More than 150,000.
joe rogan
That's nice.
alex berenson
Yes.
joe rogan
Let's see if we can juice that up.
alex berenson
I hope so.
joe rogan
Yeah.
Here it is.
Unreported truths.
alex berenson
Yes.
joe rogan
So you type in your email, and then...
alex berenson
You can subscribe.
joe rogan
Or you can just say, let me read it first, and you don't have to subscribe.
alex berenson
And you will see the first...
joe rogan
Beautiful.
alex berenson
Excited to be in Austin to talk to Joe Rogan today.
joe rogan
Yeah, beautiful.
alex berenson
And so, by the way, most of the people who are signed up do not pay.
You can choose to pay or not pay.
Basically, you're going to get the same content.
I'm very clear about that.
There will be a few things extra you get, but for the most part, it's not about money for me.
It's about getting the largest audience possible.
So I have more than 150,000 people signed up right now.
But I got to tell you, on Twitter I had 350,000, 345,000, and that was growing by about 1,000 a day towards the end.
And I had 25 million profile views in August and almost 200 million impressions.
So Twitter, in cutting me off, Twitter not only defamed me, they really hurt my efforts to get the word out.
joe rogan
Well, it's also one of the very best examples that I think I've ever come across of egregious censorship that is ideologically based and not based on anyone doing anything that is...
I don't know what their code of conduct is, whether it's about someone being malicious or it's about someone being untruthful or misrepresentation of the facts.
You did none of those things.
alex berenson
None of those things, no.
joe rogan
You really didn't.
I mean, I watched it very carefully.
I mean, you and I went back and forth with DMs, and I watched your feed very carefully.
alex berenson
And you would ask me questions.
And I'd say, you know, Joe, I disagree with this.
You know, you can't go this far.
I would say that to you.
joe rogan
Yeah, you're very, I would say, very objective about your interpretation of the data and...
What you think is going on versus, you know, what is being purported.
And I should say, first of all, right away, you were correct about a lot of the data, particularly coming out of Israel.
You sounded the warning shots long before anyone else that not only do the vaccines have a certain – there's like a window of efficacy, whether it's three months or five months, whatever it is.
alex berenson
In there, yeah.
joe rogan
But you were saying that people who are vaccinated are getting sick.
And people were treating that like you were saying that vampires were rising.
It was crazy.
It was crazy to watch.
They were saying you're lying.
But now that's the narrative.
The narrative is like the vaccines were never supposed to prevent you from getting sick.
They're supposed to keep you from being hospitalized.
alex berenson
Not even that anymore!
Now it's basically they'll prevent you from dying, which also probably, I mean, there's evidence, there's some evidence of benefit of really serious illness or death, but I'm not even convinced when we look back over, let's say, another 12 months out, that that's going to be the case.
joe rogan
Well, there have been people that have been fully vaccinated who've died from COVID. And it's publicly, there was one that was...
Crazy.
Where this woman was fully vaccinated, she got COVID, she died, and the headline was, because some people didn't get vaccinated, my mom died.
And I was like, what the fuck did you just say?
alex berenson
But it's much worse than that.
You say some people like it's rare.
In the UK, okay, and the best data we have comes out of the UK and Israel.
And I have to keep saying this to people because they almost don't believe it.
In the UK, 70 plus percent of the people who die now from COVID are fully vaccinated.
In Israel, that was— 70%?
70%.
Seven in ten of the people—I'm going to keep saying it because nobody believes it, but the numbers are there in the government documents, okay?
They're not a secret.
It's not a conspiracy theory.
It's not somebody saying, oh, I heard this from my cousin.
It's in British government documents.
joe rogan
Can you put that up so that Jamie can see it?
Sure.
alex berenson
If you go to, it's called the technical briefing from the UK Public Health England.
If you look at variants of concern, you should be able to pull up, Google should have a couple pages for you and then I can walk you through where it is.
But just to be clear on this, 7 out of 10 of the people dying of COVID in the UK now are fully vaccinated.
And another 5% or so are partly vaccinated, meaning they had one shot but not the second.
That was also the case in Israel until August, I mean in August, and that's why they freaked out and made everyone get boosters, because when you get the booster, you briefly drive up your antibodies.
We don't know what the long-term effects are, but in the short term, that makes the numbers look better for vaccines.
joe rogan
This is crazy.
What's crazy is that I know a lot of people that got vaccinated and then immediately stopped taking vitamins.
A good friend of mine, he got vaccinated, and then he got COVID. After he got vaccinated, he goes, you know what, man?
Once I got vaccinated, I stopped taking vitamins.
Because before that, he was taking zinc and vitamin C and quercetin, and he was really keeping up on his vitamin regimen and making sure that he was...
And then once he got vaccinated, he was like, oh, we're good.
I made it.
alex berenson
And then he got COVID. And then he got COVID. And he probably was okay, right, in the end?
But he probably would have been okay either way.
joe rogan
He was okay.
He wasn't feeling so good, and his doctor prescribed him ivermectin.
alex berenson
Oh, ivermectin.
joe rogan
This is before the ivermectin horse dewormer craze became public disinformation campaign number one, but ivermectin essentially knocked him out of it.
He was good within 24 hours after taking ivermectin.
alex berenson
So I'm going to say something you don't like.
joe rogan
No.
alex berenson
We have no idea if ivermectin works or doesn't.
I know it worked for you!
joe rogan
Well, what we do know, it works in vitro.
We do know that, right?
alex berenson
Yes, but the argument is that it's given...
joe rogan
Explain that, how it works in vitro.
alex berenson
Okay.
So the idea is that it interferes with the binding of SARS-CoV-2 to your cells.
joe rogan
It stops viral replication in vitro, though.
alex berenson
Yes, but the old joke about this is it's easy to cure cancer in mice, okay?
joe rogan
Right.
alex berenson
Human beings are complicated, and the argument that people – the anti-ivermectin argument people make is in doses that would be another – if you dose it for humans at the levels that it blocks that replication in vitro, you'd kill humans.
So in other words, it's not – Really?
Yes.
joe rogan
Kill humans?
I don't know if that's true because it's not really a toxic drug.
alex berenson
I'm exaggerating.
But the point that I'm trying to make is that at the levels that it's given in humans, which I think is less than a milligram per kilogram of body weight, it doesn't have 0.6, right?
That it hasn't been shown at those levels in vitro to work.
I don't claim to be an expert on ivermectin, by the way.
joe rogan
Do you know about what's going on in India and that one state in India where they've given the kits?
alex berenson
Yes.
joe rogan
They've essentially eliminated COVID in this state of 230 million people, which is pretty wild.
alex berenson
Yes.
I'm not saying ivermectin doesn't work, Joe.
What I'm saying is that we have to stand against junk science, whether it's junk science about vaccines, whether it's junk science about HCQ. You have to test this stuff in clinical trials.
joe rogan
Yes.
For people that want to look up the India thing, I think it's called Uttar Pradesh.
Uttar Pradesh.
Yeah.
alex berenson
Yes.
unidentified
Uttar Pradesh.
joe rogan
And they've essentially eliminated COVID with this preventative kit that they've given out to people, which includes ivermectin.
alex berenson
Yes.
And I know you had a good experience with ivermectin.
joe rogan
But here's the thing, man.
I threw everything at it.
I had intravenous vitamins.
What was fascinating to me was how everybody just latched on to the ivermectin thing.
That's all they talked about.
And they started calling it horse dewormer until I threatened to sue CNN. And then they stopped talking about it.
But I was like, what the fuck are you guys...
You know I can afford people medicine.
Like, it's a real people medicine.
Not only is it a real people medicine, it's literally on the World Health Organization's list of essential medicines.
It's been given out to billions of people.
alex berenson
Do you know ivermectin...
Was a game changer in Central Africa?
Yes.
It's the medicine that essentially ended river blindness in Central Africa.
And one of the inventors of it shared a Nobel Prize for finding it.
joe rogan
In 2015. That's right.
alex berenson
It's one of the great, actually one of the great pharmaceutical stores that last 40 years because Merck, which is, you can't trust any of these companies, but Merck is the best of them, even though we can talk about Merck and Vioxx separately.
Merck found ivermectin.
And the CEO at the time, this was like 30 years ago, who was a physician, said, basically, we can't make any money off this in the US. There's no market for river blindness in the US. I'm going to give this away.
And there is a statue in Merck's lobby, in the lobby in New Jersey, of somebody who is not blind because they got ivermectin.
It is a really good drug.
And this idea that it's horse-paced or it's only given to animals is a lie.
joe rogan
It is a lie, and it was a confusing lie, but I loved the fact that it was coming my way.
I really did.
I enjoyed it.
Because of all the people that it could come towards, where it would be, I would say, why are they doing that to him, and this is not true, and have it be frustrating.
To see it come at me was fascinating.
Because first of all, I was already healthy.
By the time they were talking shit, I was already out of the woods.
And I was negative the day afterwards.
Like, I was good in three days.
I was negative in five days.
And the fact that they concentrated on this lie that I was taking veterinary medicine instead of, I mean, it literally has a fucking box that says for human consumption.
alex berenson
Yes, it's a prescribed medicine.
joe rogan
But the fact they were lying about it, and not just lying about it, but using the same lie on MSNBC, on all these different Hollywood Reporter, on, you know, it was obvious that this press release had been sanctioned, or that this narrative had been promoted.
But the fact that they didn't concentrate at all on the fact, like, oh, here's this guy who just got better really quick.
alex berenson
Well, there's something called the Trusted News Initiative, which is a consortium of companies.
And this is sort of semi-public.
It's not totally hidden.
You can find a couple news stories about it, but they're certainly not going on another way to talk about it.
And it includes like Reuters and the BBC, and I believe the Associated Press and the Washington Post.
I got to go check.
But it also includes Facebook.
And this is basically, we're going to all get on the same page when we talk to you about COVID. So when masks didn't work, remember the beginning masks didn't work, we're going to all tell you not to buy masks.
And then when all of a sudden we decide they do work, you should all wear masks.
And the propaganda, I mean, it's the only word for this, is propaganda has gotten worse and worse and worse month by month.
And it has gotten, you know, with ivermectin and the vaccines, it has reached new heights.
joe rogan
What is the source of all this?
What's the epicenter of bullshit?
alex berenson
Is it Johns Hopkins?
Is it sort of the Gates Foundation?
joe rogan
Specifically in my case, when they're saying horse dewormer.
Why?
Who's doing that?
alex berenson
So there are pollsters out there who are looking at focus groups, and they're looking at the—remember, it's your turn.
Remember, get the vaccine when it's your turn.
That was focus group tested, okay?
So when they're talking about horse-to-wormer, there's somebody out there who's spending a couple million bucks a month or whatever it is to make sure that, you know, this is not for humans, it's for animals.
They are testing all that language, and that is one reason why it sounds so similar.
joe rogan
It's one of the reasons why I stopped using Google to search things, too.
They're doing something to curate information.
If I wanted to find specific cases about people who died from vaccine-related injuries, I had to go to DuckDuckGo.
I wasn't finding them on Google.
alex berenson
Yes, yes.
joe rogan
And I'm like, okay, well, this is crazy.
You guys are hiding information.
I'm looking for very specific people and very specific cases, and I'm getting CDC websites, and I'm getting articles on the disinformation attached to vaccines, and vaccines being safe and effective, which for the most part, they are just like peanuts are safe and effective for the most part.
alex berenson
Well, I mean, again, listen, I've been vaccinated against everything, you know, as a child.
Not COVID, okay?
I'm not vaccinated against COVID. But I'm talking about, am I an anti-vaxxer?
No!
joe rogan
Do you know the newest Webster definition of anti-vaxx includes someone who's against vaccine mandates or someone who's against vaccinating children?
alex berenson
Seriously?
joe rogan
Yes.
alex berenson
I did not know that.
joe rogan
We'll pull this up because this is new.
They've updated the term anti-vaxxer to not just mean someone who believes in fucking apple cider vinegar cures cancer, like these wacky fucks, but someone who thinks that vaccine mandates are a dangerous, slippery slope to fascism.
Now you're an anti-vaxxer.
Like you have to fully buy into the narrative or you get labeled this very pejorative.
Look at this.
Definition of a person who opposes the use of a vaccine or regulations mandating a vaccination.
alex berenson
That's incredible to me.
joe rogan
It is incredible.
It's dirty, man.
alex berenson
By the way, Jimmy, if you haven't been able to find that, I can try to walk you through.
It's a bit tricky to find.
joe rogan
Look at this right here, though.
Especially a parent who opposes having his or her child vaccinated.
Do you know that, I mean, there's actually statistics now that show that for boys, it is more dangerous to be vaccinated than it is to get COVID. Oh, yeah.
alex berenson
For adolescent boys, absolutely.
The rates of myocarditis, I don't think anybody's disputing now.
And this is hospitalizations.
joe rogan
Yeah, and this isn't even unreported and underreported.
alex berenson
That's right.
So one in 5,000 is, okay, so that doesn't necessarily sound like that much.
But if you're a healthy adolescent, your odds of dying from COVID are in the one in a million range.
And I will stand by that number.
They're very low.
joe rogan
I think all told children deaths from COVID haven't cracked 500. That is correct.
alex berenson
But what you don't realize when you quote that number is, first of all, the CDC says about 45% of those cases were completely incidental.
In other words, it was somebody with cancer or somebody who was in a car accident who tested positive for kids, okay?
So cut it by 45%.
Of the cases that are left, and there is good data on this, those kids, for the most part, are profoundly ill.
I mean, they have severe genetic defects.
They have cancer that's late stage.
To try to find cases of healthy children who have died from COVID is next to impossible.
joe rogan
But meanwhile, the flu is dangerous for children, right?
But did you see Fauci publicly declare that COVID is more dangerous for children than the flu?
alex berenson
Yes.
But the flu isn't that dangerous for kids either.
joe rogan
But it's dangerous enough.
I have a friend who's kind of like three people removed, but one of his friend's children died from the flu.
alex berenson
It can happen.
There's also something called RSV, which is extremely dangerous for little kids.
joe rogan
Yes.
alex berenson
And that has come roaring back this year, and nobody can quite explain why, but it may be because we kept all our kids at home.
We didn't let them trade it around last year, and all of a sudden it's back.
joe rogan
And their immune systems get compromised because of inactivity.
alex berenson
Yes.
I mean, we're meant to be outside trading germs with each other.
joe rogan
Yeah.
There's a thing that happens with kids we were talking about at lunch today, where when we were children, if someone got chicken pox, you would go over their house so you could get chicken pox.
alex berenson
That's gone now.
joe rogan
Yeah.
I mean, that was literally how my parents dealt with it.
I got chicken pox because one of my relatives got chicken pox, my cousin I think it was, and we went over his house and we all got chicken pox.
alex berenson
And you're immune to it for the rest of your life.
Exactly.
Same thing with me.
So, by the way, you're talking about the Webster thing in the dictionary.
It reminded me the CDC has changed its definition of vaccine, believe it or not.
joe rogan
To include gene therapies?
alex berenson
No.
What they're now saying is that vaccines don't need to confer immunity.
If they have a protective effect...
It's considered a vaccine.
So by that definition, actually, vitamin C might be considered a vaccine.
joe rogan
Was the flu shot?
I mean, we always called it the shot, but was it ever referred to as the flu vaccine?
Because people get the flu shot every year.
alex berenson
It was considered a vaccine, even though it's not very effective.
You know, it's funny.
What's happened is if you think about what vaccines were, you know, like the measles vaccine or the smallpox vaccine, they were effectively 100% effective for your whole life.
Now, of course, some people many years later might have a breakthrough infection, but it was called a breakthrough because it was so rare.
And so, you know, you get the MMR vaccine as a little kid and you never get measles.
Somehow, I don't understand this, like, weird mind meld that Pfizer and Moderna and BioNTech have performed on the government and on the media, where they have convinced people that these things, which by no classical definition are vaccines, they don't work like vaccines, they don't have the duration of protection of vaccines, and you can still get very sick and die post-vaccination.
joe rogan
We should explain to people that maybe don't know, just in case someone's listening, that doesn't know how a regular vaccine works.
A regular vaccine, if it's for smallpox, has an inert version of smallpox in it.
So you can't catch it, but your body recognizes it, your body develops the immunity to smallpox, and then it fights it off.
alex berenson
That's basically, yeah.
joe rogan
Yeah, right?
And these mRNA vaccines, which, by the way, the technology is amazing and fascinating, and it seems to have profound possibilities in terms of the ability to fight cancer.
They have a lot of really interesting research on the horizon.
So this is not demonizing the concept of mRNA vaccines, but what they essentially do is they tell your body to produce a certain spike protein.
And this develops this ability to fight off the COVID variants.
alex berenson
So if you think of coronavirus, it's called coronavirus because it has this corona of spikes.
It looks like a ball, and it's got these nasty little spikes poking off it.
joe rogan
Is there a real photo of one of those things?
alex berenson
It's all sort of computer generated.
It's too small to take a proper photo of it.
joe rogan
So how do they know it's got the spikes?
alex berenson
Because they know what the shape is, because they have the complete genetic code, and they know what amino acids it produces, and they know what those look like.
So, I mean, biology is magic these days.
I mean, it's truly magic.
joe rogan
Because at such small levels of...
alex berenson
That they can predict how this thing's going to fold on itself.
And they can actually predict what the mutations will cause the structural confirmation of this thing, which is so small you can't imagine how small it is.
They can imagine how it's going to look.
And when I say imagine, it's really predict.
And then they can predict how it's going to attach to your cells.
So long story short on that.
They know what the spike protein looks like and they know how to make your body make it.
So when you get the vaccine, as you say, you're not getting a whole inactivated coronavirus.
The Chinese vaccines use that technology.
joe rogan
Do they?
alex berenson
Yes.
joe rogan
Is that more effective?
alex berenson
No, it's less effective.
Really?
Yes.
For whatever reason, with respiratory viruses, the whole inactivated virus thing, or it's sometimes called attenuated virus, doesn't work very well.
We don't quite know why.
joe rogan
But I thought that they thought that this was a respiratory virus, but really it's attacking the epithelial...
alex berenson
It's both.
unidentified
Both.
alex berenson
So you have the receptors that this virus attacks all over your body, in both your lungs.
There's a ton in your lungs, but there's also a ton in the smooth muscle cells of your vasculature.
So it does have vascular complications, this virus.
So you get this vaccine.
It's a little bundle of RNA, in the case of the Pfizer and the Moderna vaccines, which is stuck inside what's called the lipid nanoparticle.
Again, incredible technology.
That bundle of RNA gets into your cells, actually just like the virus would.
And it tells your cells, make the spike protein.
So you then have a ton of spike protein in these cells.
Now one of the promises about the vaccine that has turned out not to be true is you're only going to have those spike proteins basically near the injection site.
It turns out, unfortunately, some vaccine appears to leak and travel.
joe rogan
When you're shooting something into someone's arm and you're just injecting intramuscularly into the deltoid, Is it possible to hit a vein?
alex berenson
Yes.
So that's been one of the questions, is whether or not some of the people who get myocarditis get it because they were improperly injected.
joe rogan
Is there a spot where you should and shouldn't hit?
alex berenson
That I don't know.
That's the kind of technical question I don't know.
And by the way, that hasn't been proven.
It's just a theory that people are getting it injected into their bloodstream directly, and that is leading to myocarditis.
It's not clear that's true, but it's a possibility.
So your body then makes all these spikes, and your immune system recognizes them as an invader, and it makes antibodies.
So that's what the vaccine does.
And guess what?
It works, okay?
The mRNA vaccines cause you to make a lot of antibodies, more antibodies than natural infection produces.
That's why early on people said, including virologists who are not Tony Fauci, said this looks really good.
This looks better than natural immunity to us.
joe rogan
They said it's like 94% effective or something like that initially once it kicks in.
alex berenson
Yes.
So we can talk about that.
But here's the problem.
It turns out that messing with nature, there's always a price.
So you get this really high spike of, maybe I should use a different word, a surge of antibodies that's much higher than the natural level that you'd get, but it declines really fast.
So Israel, there's a really good paper that came out of Israel, I think about two months ago on this, where natural immunity, natural antibodies fall about 5 or 10% a month.
Vaccine-generated immunities fall 40% a month.
joe rogan
40%.
alex berenson
40% a month.
So it doesn't take that long.
joe rogan
So if you're 100% on month one, on month two, you're 60?
alex berenson
Well, no, no, no.
This is not the protective effect of the vaccine.
This is the antibody count that your body is generating against these spike proteins.
Okay.
And then there's another technical issue, which is that for some reason that I think they don't even really have...
Even a good theory about, the vaccine-generated antibodies are much more narrowly focused on one part of the spike protein than natural antibodies.
Plus, if somebody like you got sick, you recovered, you have antibodies to other parts of SARS-CoV-2.
There's something called the nucleocapsid.
You have antibodies to that.
Plus, again, for reasons that we don't fully understand, it looks like your B cells, which are part of your immune system, which in the long run will generate antibodies again if you face this again, if you're reinfected, if you're re-exposed.
Those memory cells work better post-natural infection and recovery than vaccine-generated infection.
joe rogan
I'm not suggesting that anybody do this.
I want to be really clear.
But I would think that a strategy, if one wanted to be fairly safe...
Would be get vaccinated, wait a month or two, and then go to a music festival and make out with everybody.
Like, try to catch COVID, right?
Like, if you have some protection, then get the natural infection on top of it.
alex berenson
Not clear, okay?
joe rogan
I'm not a doctor.
alex berenson
No, no.
joe rogan
Nor am I a scientist.
alex berenson
Nor are you a scientist.
joe rogan
Nor do I give good advice.
alex berenson
Nor do you...
joe rogan
This is not good advice.
alex berenson
That's not good advice.
I'm not going to...
No, here's what I say, because I don't want to tell go people to go tell them to get infected.
joe rogan
I like how we're doing these little disclaimers.
It helps.
Spotify is going to enjoy these disclaimers.
alex berenson
Protection after natural infection and recovery is superior to vaccine protection.
joe rogan
According to that study from Israel, 2.5 billion people, 6 to 13 percent, or 60 to 13 times X, 6 to 13 times X better.
alex berenson
That's correct.
And that was with the Delta variant.
joe rogan
Yeah.
alex berenson
So here's the, of the many, many, there are many, many problems around vaccine immunity.
Because your immunity is so tailored to the spike protein, and not just the spike protein, to one part of it, to the receptor binding domain, it's called of the spike protein.
If the virus mutates just a little bit in that part, those vaccine antibodies you have don't work very well anymore.
And you don't have the backup stuff that you get, you know, you personally and everybody else who's been infected and recovered gets.
joe rogan
Yeah, I was reading something about that today.
I actually made a note about it because I knew it was going to come up on the podcast today because I found this discussion of it to be pretty interesting.
But this one guy had this take on it where he said that natural immunity is demonstrably more generalized and robust to variant mutations and that the vaccines are designed to be specifically targeted and that's what allowed them to get created so quickly.
Is that an accurate assessment on that?
alex berenson
Yes, that's absolutely correct.
Well, I mean, think about it.
You're the virus, okay?
I mean, the virus doesn't think, okay, but it wants to survive.
If, you know, different human beings are going to have somewhat different responses to natural infection, the vaccine response is always the same, okay?
Because the vaccine is always the same.
So the vaccine response is we're going to generate a ton of antibodies for this one particular part of the spike protein.
Well, the virus, quote-unquote, knows that if it can just mutate that bit of itself...
It will escape vaccination.
It will escape vaccine immunity, I should say.
And that's what the virus appears to be doing.
And there's a paper out of Japan from August where these researchers demonstrate, and these are all first-rate, okay?
These are first-rate academic institutions that are doing this.
They demonstrated that four relatively small mutations on SARS-CoV-2 Could lead to escape from vaccine-generated immunity.
joe rogan
Escape meaning that the vaccine-generated immunity would be non-existent?
alex berenson
Or close to non-existent.
That's not the worst-case scenario, by the way.
The worst case scenario is that the virus mutates in a way that the vaccine actually, this is why it's called antibody-dependent enhancement.
The antibodies continue to be able to attach to part of the virus.
But the virus has mutated in a way that after attaching, they actually help it bind to cells.
joe rogan
Now, someone sent me something today from a very fishy-looking GeoCities-type website that was claiming that there was some Department of Defense, artificial intelligence.
Have you read that this is going around?
alex berenson
Yeah, I thought it was BS, but I think it's actually totally true.
We can pull it up.
It's correct.
joe rogan
Really?
alex berenson
Yes.
By the way...
It's called Humetrix.
I still want you to find this other thing, though.
By the way, the...
joe rogan
Jamie's doubling over time.
jamie vernon
Let's do that first before I go into Humetrix.
alex berenson
It sounds like a left turn.
I don't want people to, especially since I said 70%, and I know that's such a stunning number, I don't want people to think I made that up.
joe rogan
Yes, let's go with that first.
So this is 70% of all vaccinated people, of the deaths in England.
unidentified
So this is the bullshit that comes up.
joe rogan
This is from Wall Street Journal.
It says, study in England shows very few deaths among vaccinated people.
Survey finds that...
640 coronavirus deaths in the first half of 2021 among people who received two shots and more than 50,000 among those who had it.
alex berenson
Right.
So that's correct, too.
Both things can be true.
The reason is that most of those deaths occurred in January and February and March.
And as we know, this is another thing that I was criticized immensely for on Twitter and has turned out to be totally correct.
In the first week or two after you get the first dose, you're actually at higher risk of being infected with and dying from COVID, it looks like.
joe rogan
Because your immune system has to kick in?
alex berenson
Yes.
It looks like there's a temporary suppression of your immune system.
We've seen this all over the world.
There is a spike in COVID cases following that first dose.
Here's how it works, okay?
You get this spike after the first dose, which we're not allowed to talk about, and which was...
Specifically excluded from that 95% figure that the companies came up with.
joe rogan
Specifically excluded meaning that they edited it out?
alex berenson
They didn't count those cases.
They counted them, but they didn't report them as part of the vaccine efficacy.
So here's the theory.
If a vaccine lasts 10 years, okay, yes, maybe there's a little spike in cases after that first dose, but who cares?
You get 10 years of protection at 95%.
A few cases at the beginning does not matter.
So the companies, when they counted cases, they said, we're going to count cases in people who are fully vaccinated.
That's in the case of Pfizer, I believe, was one week after the second dose.
In the case of Moderna, two weeks after the second dose.
So all the cases in the first five weeks, whether you were vaccinated or not, were not included in the description, in the calculation of vaccine protectiveness.
joe rogan
Now, is there any documentation as to why they made that distinction?
alex berenson
Yeah, again, because they said, you know what, it's not fair.
It's not fair to count those cases because, again, let's say the vaccine lasts forever or 10 years.
We don't really care about what's happening the first week or two in.
joe rogan
But wouldn't it be important data?
alex berenson
Well, I'm not saying – it's not that they didn't count them at all.
They just didn't.
You can find it in the trial data.
They just didn't report it when they said when they said 95 percent efficacy, 95 percent protectiveness.
They weren't counting a whole lot of cases in people who just been vaccinated.
They just and they and they told the world that.
I mean, it's just that nobody nobody bothered to think about what that meant.
And the reason it means so much is because vaccine protection doesn't last 10 years.
It doesn't even last 10 months.
So if you're thinking about a traditional drug, like an antidepressant or a cholesterol drug, a drug that people might take for a few months.
So you get depressed, your doctor prescribes you an antidepressant, you take it for a few months.
If I, the company that made the antidepressant, said to the FDA, well, sure, there were a couple suicides and a couple cases of really severe depression after the first week, but we can't count those.
We got to wait for this thing to kick in.
The FDA would say, are you crazy?
Like, you count from the day the first person gets the first dose of your drug, okay?
And if we want to see if this thing works, we got to count every case for six months, okay?
Mm-hmm.
Right.
Because it doesn't not count if you killed yourself three days after starting your antidepressants.
But the word vaccine has this magic for people.
So the companies said, we don't want to count any of those early cases.
And the FDA said, OK.
And all my competitors, I suppose, at the New York Times and everywhere else, either didn't understand that this was happening or didn't understand what it meant.
And they all bought that 95 percent figure.
So, okay, so you get negative efficacy, it looks like, early on, zero to negative efficacy.
Then you get a few weeks of 50% efficacy.
Then you get to what I call the happy vaccine valley, okay, which is where part of Europe is right now, which is where Israel was back in March and April and May, where...
Everybody's walking around with tons of antibodies.
Yes, they're declining, but they had so many that they have tons of antibodies, and it looks really good.
Okay?
Israel has 10 million people.
There were days in June, in late May and June, when they had 10 COVID cases, 15 COVID cases, and they had basically nobody in the hospital.
And that's when everyone was like, these things are a miracle.
We're going to end COVID and I can find you.
Tony Fauci is basically saying, I believe we can eliminate COVID. He said that in May.
It was peak overconfidence.
And then what happens is the antibodies just go away.
And or the virus mutates away from the antibodies.
And guess what?
You don't have zero COVID anymore.
In fact, in Israel, in late August, before they got desperate with the boosters, they were having more cases than they'd had back in January when they just started vaccinating.
joe rogan
Have the boosters been effective in Israel?
alex berenson
Yes, in the short run.
They're gonna be effective in the short run because they kick your antibodies back up.
But the question is whether or not, A, how long that lasts, B, what the side effects are, and C, do you want to keep doing that forever to people?
joe rogan
For people that have had no side effects, though, from the initial vaccines, Even then, it's not clear.
alex berenson
Okay?
Because it's...
joe rogan
Have you talked to anybody that's gotten boosters?
alex berenson
Yeah, yeah.
joe rogan
What is...
alex berenson
I mean, so, you know, I've talked to a couple people who've gotten them.
Most people, it's the same side effects as the second dose.
One guy I talked to had more side effects.
My mom actually got a booster and had fewer side effects.
But mRNA vaccines, okay, and you're right, it's an amazing technology.
They weren't initially designed as vaccines, the technology.
It was designed to treat cancer and other things where there's repeated dosing.
And guess what?
They had to drop that idea because the toxicity of the delivery mechanism appeared to increase with repeated dosing.
So it is absolutely unclear what it will mean to give people a third dose, a fourth dose, a fifth dose, a sixth dose.
Remember, if Fauci is saying, as he said, five to eight months after your second dose, you need a booster.
Well, I would hope that we're all planning to live more than five to eight months after that second dose.
So it's going to be, are we going to need a fourth shot?
Are we going to need a fifth shot?
joe rogan
And what's interesting is that this talk about boosters was never considered initially.
There was the talk of the first shot and the second shot.
alex berenson
The companies were very careful in what they said.
They were much more careful than everybody else.
joe rogan
Well, a lot of people, including Bill Maher, he talked about it on the show.
He's like, I got vaccinated, take one for the team.
alex berenson
That's right.
joe rogan
And then, you know, now they're saying boosters.
He's like, I'm not doing it.
alex berenson
No, that's right.
I mean, I think there are people who feel fool me once, shame on you, right?
But, you know, in Israel, they've now said you're not considered vaccinated.
joe rogan
Unless you've had three shots.
alex berenson
That's right.
joe rogan
What's weird to me, and I guess this is just human nature, is how people become so tribal about it and how the vaccinated people are doubling down.
There's some of them that identify with being vaccinated to the point where it's almost like a religious distinction or, you know, a political distinction.
Right.
alex berenson
So there's some really ugly stuff going on.
And some of it's actually subtle and some of it's not subtle.
One of the subtle things that I think has happened is that this is the first time in history, at least that I can think of, that the sort of most educated, wealthiest people have put their hands up and said, I want to be the guinea pig!
So, like, those people were desperate to get vaccinated, most of them.
And, you know, people like me, you know, look, I went to Yale, I worked for the New York Times.
Right.
joe rogan
Right.
alex berenson
And so and so I think, unfortunately, I think some of what's happened and you can see it sometimes explicitly is there's a lot of talking down to people who haven't been vaccinated.
You're just dumb.
You're just a mouth breather.
You just, you know, you just want the horse paste.
And what and now that those people who got themselves vaccinated, who desperately rushed out, in some cases lied about their eligibility back in January and February, are realizing that, you know, the stupid people maybe made the right choice.
It's very hard for them to admit that.
joe rogan
I don't think they think they made the right choice.
I think here's one of the things I think is going on.
think some people were a little nervous to get vaccinated but they did it they bit the bullet and then they want other people to do it too they want you to do it because they did it and they think they did it like Bill Maher said he did it for the right reasons he took one for the team they think they did it for the right reasons because it was what you're supposed to do and they should be rewarded and this is one of the things that sort of ramps up this acceptance of vaccine mandates and vaccine passports which really disturbs me as It becomes, I did it.
You should do it.
We should make those people do it.
We should force those people to do it, regardless of whether or not there is an effective treatment outside of the vaccine, regardless of whether or not it makes sense because these people have had a previous infection to COVID and that infection imparted superior protection.
They don't care.
They want you to do it because they did it.
alex berenson
Yes, yes, I agree with that.
I mean, back in the spring, and you know, I wrote this book, and this is one of two copies in the world, physical copies.
This one's yours, the other one's Tucker's, yes.
unidentified
Oh, I don't know if that's good.
alex berenson
No, you guys are completely different, but you're the same in the most important way, which is you don't buy into bullshit.
joe rogan
Well, we'll also talk to anybody.
Tucker has a lot of left-wing people on, and he doesn't disparage them or criticize them or mock them.
He had Brett Weinstein on, who's very progressive.
He has Tulsi Gabbard on.
He has people on.
I mean, I think he's unfairly labeled because people want to marginalize him and dismiss him immediately and call him a white separatist or a white supremacist or whatever word that makes you a part of a list of people that you can never associate with.
They like to initially do that about him.
I think his discussions that he has on his show are some of the most nuanced in that he is willing to have conversations with anybody from all these different people that have been in issues with college censorship or so-called progressive college students have censored professors from discussing certain topics or He'll talk about all kinds of things,
and I think that's very important in this time, that you have people like him.
As much as he gets criticized, and as much as I get criticized, there's a very important thing that is happening when people are discussing uncomfortable issues.
We have to figure out what's right and what's wrong, and you don't get that by just buying into the official narrative.
alex berenson
Right.
I mean, you guys are both suspicious of the official narrative.
And it's funny, Tucker Carlson, could there be a sort of whiter guy than Tucker?
But at heart, he's a populist.
I truly believe that.
And I don't necessarily agree with him about everything.
But at heart, he's a populist.
And at heart, you're a populist.
And I think...
I've become – maybe I don't know if populist is the right word or the wrong word, but I am so struck by the left's willingness to buy into the narrative that – especially that the pharma industry is selling right now.
And it's – I don't understand it.
And I think, you know, like you – like you don't buy into that often.
And that's a good thing.
joe rogan
Well, you know, you brought up Vioxx earlier with Merck, and one of the reasons why I became initially suspicious of, I mean, there's a lot of reasons to become suspicious of the motives behind pharmaceutical companies because there's an enormous profit incentive.
They make tremendous amounts of money from these things.
And if they can fudge the numbers or move things around, I mean, Pfizer paid out, I think it was the biggest ever settlement by any company.
alex berenson
It was more than $2 billion, yes.
joe rogan
A stunning amount of money.
For fraud, right?
alex berenson
Yes.
What did they do?
It was $2.3 billion.
It was for over-marketing a whole series of drugs, including Neurontin.
Which is a drug for fibromyalgia and for pain generally.
joe rogan
Here it is.
Largest healthcare fraud settlement in its history.
$2.3 billion for fraudulent marketing.
alex berenson
So Neurontin is Lyrica.
Bextra was their coccib drug.
So both Pfizer and Merck, actually, even though I generally think Merck is one of the better of these companies, they made drugs that essentially were aspirin, except that they had a little side effect, which is they caused heart attacks in people.
joe rogan
Are you talking about Vioxx?
alex berenson
I'm talking about Vioxx.
joe rogan
I have a friend who had pretty bad arthritis in his knees and so he took Vioxx and had a fucking stroke and he was like 30 years old.
He's a fighter and so his knees were just damaged from years of martial arts training and Did he recover?
Yes, pretty much.
Yeah, he still has some...
I think he still has some...
I'd have to talk to him about that.
I'm not sure.
But I know it was a long process.
He did a lot of things, very unconventional things.
He got stem cell therapy and a bunch of different things to try to handle.
It wasn't a small deal.
alex berenson
No, no, no, no, no.
joe rogan
It was a very big deal.
But he was talking to people.
It just started like trailing off in his words and everybody was like, hey man, are you okay?
Like something was going...
And then it was like a slow, subtle realization that he was having a stroke.
unidentified
Yeah.
alex berenson
When you get a blood clot in your brain, bad things happen.
joe rogan
Yeah.
alex berenson
So, and Merck, and you know, you can pull it up or not, but Merck...
Merck made Vioxx, and Vioxx, the FDA estimated, killed 55,000 people.
55,000 people.
That's not a small number, okay?
And that's just been forgotten.
joe rogan
And it was essentially like a type of anti-inflammatory?
alex berenson
Yes.
So the idea was that, you know, I often take a lot of ibuprofen.
It can be very hard on your stomach if you take these drugs for too long.
joe rogan
Why are you taking that shit?
alex berenson
Bad back.
joe rogan
Yeah?
alex berenson
Yeah.
I go into it in the book a little bit, actually.
unidentified
Okay.
alex berenson
I treat my back badly.
I don't stretch.
And so, of course, I wind up throwing it out from time to time.
I'm an idiot about it.
joe rogan
We can talk about that outside of the podcast.
I can help you.
alex berenson
I need something.
joe rogan
Yeah, I can help you.
alex berenson
But so you take these drugs for too long, it tears up your stomach.
Tears up the lining of your stomach.
unidentified
Yeah, very, very bad.
alex berenson
So Vioxx was supposed to, and Baxter, Celecoxib, and Rofocoxib, these two drugs, were supposed to spare the lining of your stomach, which they do.
There's just one little problem, which is it's like in the United States, and this is about all drugs, we have this idea like you take the pill and the problem goes away.
unidentified
Right.
joe rogan
And that's what we want.
alex berenson
That's what we want.
joe rogan
That's the commercial show.
alex berenson
That's right.
joe rogan
The lady dancing in the wheat field, butterflies, beautiful music.
alex berenson
That's right.
joe rogan
Everything's cheery.
alex berenson
That's right.
joe rogan
I want to be like her.
alex berenson
That's right.
And unfortunately, that's not human biology, okay?
These are complicated products and almost always you have downstream side effects that you don't realize.
The only drugs where that actually seems not to be the case broadly are statins.
And I don't take a statin, but I would take one if I needed to without thinking about it.
And even then, people complain about statins.
joe rogan
I've heard negative side effects.
I've heard doctors warn me about statins.
alex berenson
People say it can cause muscle aches and other stuff.
But for the most part, and those drugs have been tested in, you know, Tens of thousands of people, and they actually appear to reduce deaths from heart attacks and strokes.
If you do the test right, you get real answers.
Okay.
Vioxx, unfortunately, caused people to have heart attacks.
And Merck, unfortunately, knew about it.
Okay?
They knew.
They knew years before they stopped selling it.
joe rogan
They knew before they released it?
alex berenson
Yes, they knew even before they released it.
I know this.
I covered...
The very first Vioxx trial was in Texas.
This was in 2005. And I was down here for the New York Times covering that trial.
And I paid really close attention.
They knew what was going on.
Now, they came up with this cockamamie story that Vioxx didn't actually cause heart attacks, that naproxen, which is a leave, actually protected people from heart attacks.
And they convinced the FDA that that was the truth.
And the FDA allowed them to sell Vioxx.
And then Merck, in 2001, spent $160 million advertising Vioxx to consumers.
More money than Budweiser spent advertising Budweiser that year.
for a product that you can't go into a store and buy.
For a product that you need a doctor's prescription to get.
Okay?
unidentified
Wow.
alex berenson
And they got tens of millions of people to take that drug and they killed, by the FDA's estimate, 55,000 people.
And Merck is supposedly the best of these guys.
And not one person ever went to jail for that.
And Merck paid out a few billion dollars to plaintiffs, lawyers, and to the families of people who'd been hurt.
And that was the end of it.
And everyone's forgotten all about it.
And I'm not even talking about the opioid crisis and Purdue Pharma.
And you know one of the companies that has gotten in trouble for opioids?
Johnson& Johnson.
Maker of the third major vaccine in the United States, the third major COVID vaccine.
So do not tell me that these companies are our friends.
They are in it for the money.
If they can produce a product that helps people, they will do it.
But if that product turns out to have side effects or problems, you cannot expect them to tell the truth because they don't.
And I am totally okay saying that about specific companies because I covered these cases.
joe rogan
What you said wouldn't be remotely controversial 24 months ago.
alex berenson
Right?
joe rogan
Not even remotely.
What you said, everyone, college professors, CEOs, garbage men, everyone would agree with you across the board.
Now, all of a sudden, because it's an inconvenient truth in the fact that we need these pharmaceutical companies to deliver these vaccines, which people have...
Like, did you see that lady in New York, your new governor?
Did you see that fucking crazy lady?
alex berenson
Yes!
joe rogan
Who's saying that the vaccines are from God and she needs us to all be apostles?
alex berenson
Yes!
joe rogan
Folks, find that video because, Jamie, please, it is so fucking patently insane.
Like, we got rid of a molester and we replaced it with a crazy person.
She's insane.
Like, a person who is, like, I don't...
alex berenson
Do you see she's got a necklace that says vaxxed?
joe rogan
Yes, which is fine.
That doesn't bother me.
These statements.
I mean, if you want to get a Pfizer tattoo, I don't give a fuck.
But I've seen that, too.
There's a lot of Pfizer tattoos.
alex berenson
Because Pfizer was supposedly the good one.
Now they're all sad because Moderna actually turns out to, it seems like it has a little bit longer protective effect.
joe rogan
Well, it's more of an impact, but also more side effects.
alex berenson
Yes.
Well, it's 100 micrograms against 30 per dose, so it seems to last a little bit longer.
joe rogan
Listen to this lady.
Listen to this, because this is so crazy.
And by the way, she didn't even win the election, okay?
You got lucky that it turns out the other guy was a creep.
unidentified
To get this community back.
And what we went through this pandemic made us stronger.
I believe that, especially when I talk to young people who weren't able to have their graduations from high school or a normal life for the last 18 months.
I say to them, whatever comes your way in life, you are stronger.
You are more resilient.
God let you survive this pandemic because he wants you to do great things someday.
He let you live through this when so many other people did not.
I like how she gendered God.
And that is also your responsibility.
But how do we keep more people alive?
We are not through this pandemic.
I wished we were, but I prayed a lot to God during this time.
And you know what?
God did answer our prayers.
He made the smartest men and women, the scientists, the doctors, the researchers, he made them come up with a vaccine.
That is from God to us.
And we must say, thank you, God.
Thank you.
And I wear my vaccinated necklace all the time and say, I'm vaccinated.
All of you.
Yes, I know you're vaccinated.
You're the smart ones.
But you know there's people out there who aren't listening to God and what God wants.
You know this.
You know who they are.
I need you to be my apostles.
I need you to go out and talk about it and say, we owe this to each other.
We love each other.
Jesus taught us to love one another.
And how do you show that love?
joe rogan
Pfizer.
unidentified
But to care about each other enough to say, please get vaccinated because I love you.
joe rogan
Okay, okay.
You got something else?
alex berenson
If you Google variants of concern, UK technical briefing.
joe rogan
Here it is.
alex berenson
Okay.
Oh, they got 24 out now.
That must have just come out.
So go to 24. And this will be exciting for me too because I haven't seen it.
jamie vernon
I was trying to figure out where in here I was supposed to look because I started digging through the stuff.
alex berenson
Go down, down, down, down.
Keep going, keep going, keep going, keep going.
unidentified
Keep going, keep going, keep going, keep going.
alex berenson
Okay.
Okay, so this tells you, as of the 27th of September, there were 3,200 deaths from the Delta variant.
The Delta variant is almost all the cases these days, not just in the UK, but everywhere in the world.
So go down some more.
Some more.
Keep going, keep going, keep going.
Secondary attack rates.
Keep going.
Keep going.
And this is variant stuff.
Keep going.
Don't tell me they took it out.
I don't think they took it out.
Keep going.
What?
Well, that's interesting.
We may need to go back to the previous one because it's not in here.
joe rogan
What do you mean?
Go to 23?
alex berenson
Yeah, go to 23. Right below that?
Unless it's in the underlying data.
joe rogan
What are we looking for here?
alex berenson
What we're looking for is figures that will tell...
You know what?
Let me...
I don't want to have to subject the audience to this.
Let me find it.
jamie vernon
So, I guess I was digging through that and I found this interpretation of data.
This said that there's a lot of people in that age range that would be vaccinated.
alex berenson
Yes.
jamie vernon
I found there's a lot of people in one chart that said there was like 200,000 people that got it that were unvaccinated under the age of like 25 or something like that.
alex berenson
Go down one more page.
Okay.
Okay.
All right.
So this is week 34 through week 37. That's going to be basically September.
So this tells you the rates.
Oh, yes.
This is great.
Rates of illness among people who have and have not been vaccinated.
On the right.
So what you can see is that in people over 50...
Rates of illness are higher in the vaccinated than the unvaccinated.
900 to 600 in people 50 to 60. 600 to 400 in people 60 to 70. 500 roughly to 360. In each of those cases, the number in the second to last graph, the second to last column, is higher.
So what that's telling you is that people who are vaccinated with two doses are more likely to be infected with SARS-CoV-2 than people who are not vaccinated.
joe rogan
It's interesting how it changes the Somewhere around 40 to 49. That's right.
alex berenson
And there's a good scientific reason for that, which is basically there's something called immunosenescence, which basically means that your immune system, as you get older, has a harder time dealing with disease, right?
I mean, that's sort of intuitively obvious.
It also has a harder time mounting the response that the vaccines are supposed to help with.
So, okay.
So that's one chart.
And again, this is UK government data.
And what it says is that the idea that this is a pandemic of the unvaccinated is a total lie.
You are more likely to become sick if you are vaccinated than if you are not and you're over 50. In these older categories.
In these older categories.
joe rogan
So anything above 50 is where the number shifts.
alex berenson
Actually above 40, if you see, because 40 is actually the highest number of all.
There's 1,150, so it's about 1 in 100 people in those four weeks in 40 to 50-year-olds.
joe rogan
Right.
So before that, before 40, it seems to shift in favor of the vaccinated.
alex berenson
Yes.
joe rogan
So would you make the argument that if you're younger, you should be vaccinated?
alex berenson
No, because in that case, your risk of underlying disease, you're very likely to recover very quickly from COVID if you're not.
joe rogan
If you're younger.
unidentified
Yes.
Right.
Got it.
alex berenson
So let's go to the next page.
Okay.
This is emergency care.
Go to the next page.
Okay.
So these are deaths.
Okay.
So now...
This is on a per 100,000 basis.
So what you will see is that vaccines...
Oh no, look at the third from the left.
Third from the left.
Second dose more than 14 days before specimen date.
These are people who have died.
Fully vaccinated people who have died.
There were 1,270 fully vaccinated people who died out of 1,500 in the over 80 category.
joe rogan
But this is under 14 days before specimen date?
alex berenson
No, no, no.
Over.
joe rogan
Over.
alex berenson
Second dose greater than 14 days means I am fully vaccinated by anybody's definition.
joe rogan
Okay.
alex berenson
Not vaccinated, it says.
When it says second dose before 14 days or more than 14 days, what it should say is fully vaccinated.
That's what that means.
joe rogan
Why does it differentiate between that after 14 days and then the next one is rates among persons vaccinated with two doses?
alex berenson
Okay, so I promise you I won't answer that question, but what I want everyone to see is that the vast majority of people in Britain who died in September were fully vaccinated.
1,270 out of 1,500 were fully vaccinated.
607 of the 70-year-olds out of 800 were fully vaccinated.
258 out of the 411 60-year-olds, they were almost all fully vaccinated.
Most people who die of this now are fully vaccinated in the UK. Those are the numbers.
joe rogan
And the rates among persons not vaccinated and vaccinated with two doses per 100,000, what do they mean by that?
alex berenson
So what they're showing you there is that even though the vast majority of people who died were vaccinated, the vaccine still appears to have some protective effect because rates among...
So think of it this way, Joe.
Eighty percent of the people who died over 80 were vaccinated, but 95 percent of people in that age range were vaccinated.
So that implies that the vaccine still offers you some protection.
Because if it offered you zero protection, then it would be 95% of the people who died over age 80 were vaccinated.
Does that make sense?
joe rogan
Sort of.
It's complicated.
alex berenson
Suppose we have a room of 100 people, okay?
Or 1,000 people.
950 of those people are vaccinated and 50 are not.
If 100 people died out of the 950, but 20 people died out of the 50...
That would still imply that the vaccine was doing some good.
Got it.
joe rogan
And that's actually a pretty good analogy to what you're seeing there because you're getting 100 out of 950 compared to 20 out of 50. So when you say that most of the people who are dying are vaccinated, is that because the levels or the rates of vaccination is very high?
alex berenson
Yes, but there's another complexity here, and this is the part that the vaccine advocates never admit.
When you get to a place like Britain or Israel where almost everybody in that age range is vaccinated, over 70, over 80. Who's not being vaccinated?
Do you think there's a lot of people in the old age home who are saying, you know what?
I'm insisting on my personal rights.
You can't vaccinate me?
Some 88 year old?
No.
The only people who aren't being vaccinated in the age group are probably too sick or too close to the end of their lives.
joe rogan
Isn't that speculative though?
It could be rebels.
It could be people that are like into holistic medicine or whatever.
alex berenson
Well, there's some evidence.
We have evidence that people who are vaccinated are more fearful than people who are not vaccinated.
joe rogan
You should tell that to Keith Olbermann.
Did you see his rant?
alex berenson
No.
joe rogan
You didn't see it?
alex berenson
No, I did not see this.
joe rogan
It's one of the most unhinged...
It's sad that this guy was like a respected pundit.
Have you seen it, Jamie?
unidentified
No.
joe rogan
You need to see it.
He publicly gets vaccinated and then yells at all the people that are not vaccinated.
We need to play it.
It's so unhinged.
alex berenson
You know, Joe, you caught me, though.
I want to say you caught me on this because you're right.
It is speculative.
That is my speculation that there is this difference in these two groups.
joe rogan
Yeah, because I know there's a lot of people that are just untrusting of the government or they're really into, you know, air quotes, holistic medicine.
alex berenson
But we're not talking about 50 or 40 or 30-year-olds.
We're talking about people in this group of people who are at high risk and who basically...
I mean, I don't want to say, you know, hopefully we'll all be 90 one day, but, you know, I'm not sure how much, like, agency those folks have when somebody shows up at the old age home and says, we're going to vaccinate everybody.
Right.
joe rogan
I know what you're saying.
alex berenson
Do you see what I'm saying?
what I'm saying?
So what I'm saying, though, is that tiny group of people who are not vaccinated in that age range, I suspect, and you're right, it's speculation, are materially sicker than the people who are vaccinated.
Oh, here's the evidence.
Let me give you this evidence for this.
The evidence is in the flu vaccine, okay?
When you look at flu vaccines, you say, and there's been a lot of work done on this.
I'm talking about in older people.
People who get the flu vaccine are less likely to die than people who don't get the flu vaccine.
Looks really good for the flu vaccine.
Here's the problem.
You go back and look at the six months before people got the flu vaccine, people who get the flu vaccine are less likely to die in those six months too.
Much less likely.
Why?
Because if you're together enough, if you're 80 years old and together enough to want the flu vaccine, you have a certain baseline level of health.
And you probably care more about your health, okay?
So the flu vaccine on a population level basis appears to do nothing to reduce flu deaths in people over 65. But...
It also appears to reduce deaths in people over 65. And the explanation is it's not actually reducing deaths.
It's telling you who's healthier and who's less likely to die.
Does that make sense?
joe rogan
It does.
alex berenson
So that it is very, very likely, at least in my mind, that something similar has happened.
unidentified
I see.
joe rogan
I hesitate to agree with you.
I see what you're saying, but I hesitate to agree with you because I do believe there's a certain amount of speculation involved.
alex berenson
Yes.
joe rogan
Yeah.
You got the Keith Overman thing?
Watch this.
You need to see this.
You gotta remember also, snowflakes who are afraid of getting the vaccine!
You gotta watch this.
He's gonna get the shot.
He gets it.
unidentified
Mission accomplished.
And it is.
It is time to stop cobbling them.
The ones who won't get the damn shot already.
And our first step, you and I, is symbols.
The language we use.
We call these people vaccine hesitant.
Vaccine skeptics.
Anti-vax.
We say they're protesting mandates and passports.
They're making a personal choice.
They're waiting for more information.
They're making a medical decision.
Bullshit!
They're afraid.
They're afraid to get vaccinated.
Stop feeding their egos about what they're doing.
Stop legitimizing it.
Vaccine hesitant, they're afraid.
Vaccine skeptics, they're afraid.
Anti-vax, they're afraid.
joe rogan
Is that a little bit of spit in the upper lip?
unidentified
Oh my god, I saw it.
They're afraid.
They're making a personal choice.
They're afraid.
They're waiting for more information.
Afraid.
They're making a medical decision to be afraid.
The snowflakes are afraid.
Afraid of the vaccine.
Afraid of being proved wrong.
Afraid of doing what anybody else in the world tells them to do.
Afraid of needles.
keith olbermann
So, no more pleasant euphemisms about what's going on here.
Apart from the people who have legitimate medical complications about vaccines, we have to stop coddling the morons who will not get the shot!
We start by calling them what they are.
unidentified
They are all snowflakes and cowards and idiots and losers.
And most importantly, they are Afraid!
joe rogan
Imagine...
alex berenson
Oh my god, he's so insane.
joe rogan
Imagine making that and thinking this is a good thing to release when you're in a penthouse apartment.
It looks like he's on the 80th floor in the most expensive real estate on planet Earth.
Overlooking Central Park in this beautiful view that he has and then making this and thinking you're...
What are you thinking?
You're Billy Badass?
You're...
alex berenson
I don't...
Listen, this is so stupid, Joe.
Like, we haven't even gotten to the fundamental stupidity of this.
If the vaccine works, then great.
You're vaccinated.
Congratulations.
You don't have to worry about me.
I made a bad decision.
Maybe I'll get sick and die.
Like, okay, it's not your problem.
And don't give me this nonsense that, like, somehow there are so many unvaccinated people that it's going to destroy hospital systems, okay?
Even in the United States, 80%...
Of the people who are at real risk of getting sick and dying from COVID, people over 65, are fully vaccinated.
All right?
The reason that we have a problem with COVID right now is not that people are unvaccinated.
It is that the vaccines do not work as promised, and they don't work for very long.
That's what the British data told you.
That's why I wanted everyone to see that.
joe rogan
Well, I talked to the mayor of Austin.
He said that most people in the ICU for COVID, most people hospitalized for COVID are unvaccinated.
alex berenson
Yeah, I'm not sure if that's true or not, okay?
joe rogan
I don't really believe- You calling the mayor of Austin, Texas a liar, you son of a bitch?
alex berenson
Did he give you specific numbers?
unidentified
No.
alex berenson
No, of course not.
joe rogan
But he told me.
We were talking about it.
alex berenson
Okay, so most could be 51%.
That's possible.
In the countries that have real data that they're releasing on a timely basis, you see, okay?
Again, in Israel, last month, well now it's August, they got so terrified they were going to have the worst wave yet of COVID that they gave people boosters.
They asked the entire country to get boosters.
Do you know how much data there was around booster shots when they did that?
There was data, published data.
It wasn't even published.
It was just the company press release data on about three dozen people.
joe rogan
That's it?
alex berenson
Yes!
People don't understand...
joe rogan
36 people?
Really?
alex berenson
Yes!
At that time.
Okay, now there's data on a couple hundred.
And that's what the FDA... That's why the FDA choked, okay?
That's why the FDA wouldn't give Pfizer and Fauci and Biden what they wanted last month.
Because finally...
joe rogan
Explain that to people.
alex berenson
Okay, so in August...
The vaccines go off the rails in Israel, okay?
In June, in July, I say the vaccines are going off the rails, and people start to lose their mind, right?
And that's when Twitter really starts to come at me.
And we can talk about that chronology, and we can talk about my potential legal causes of action against Twitter if we want.
But you know what?
unidentified
Yeah, we definitely will.
alex berenson
Let's not make it about me, okay?
Okay.
In June, at the beginning of June, there are 15 COVID cases a day in Israel.
They are done with COVID. At the end of June, there are 300. In mid-July, there are 3,000.
At the end of July, there might be the end of July when there are 3,000.
In any case, 200-fold increase in cases a day in positive tests for COVID between June 1st and August 1st in Israel.
The vaccines just stop working, okay?
They just stop.
Biologically, your body gets rid of these antibodies that it's been forced to generate.
And sort of like sociologically, people start getting sick.
I mean, you know, there's what happens at the cellular level and then there's what happens at the body level, right?
At the like level of counting cases.
So we know, we know antibodies go away and we know people start getting sick again.
That's a better way to explain it.
Fine.
Okay.
By early July, I'm looking at this and I'm like, you know, this does not look good.
And I don't understand what's going to turn it around.
I don't understand why we think that the biology of these first few people to start getting infected post-vaccine is different than the biology of other people who were vaccinated later.
I think this is going to get worse.
And I start saying this on Twitter.
Vaccines are failing.
Vaccines are failing.
People did not like hearing it.
Okay.
Okay.
By the end of July, early August, it was clear that Israel and the UK were headed for a crisis.
It was more clear in Israel because the UK, it's a little bit complicated because they used several different vaccines and they dosed them off schedule.
Israel is just like the US. Israel used only the Pfizer vaccine, where in the US we basically used only the Pfizer and Moderna, the mRNA vaccines.
We used a little J&J, but not very much.
And Israel dosed on the schedule the companies had suggested, just as we did.
Okay.
It is clear by early August that something bad is happening.
And the Israeli response is, we want everyone to get a booster.
Everyone.
Over 80, under 80, sick, well, it doesn't matter.
You got the vaccine, now you need your booster.
Okay?
It's time for your bonus vaccine, as I like to call it.
The bonus vaccine.
It's a freebie.
Hey, good for Pfizer.
The stocks of the companies of Pfizer and Moderna and BioNTech hit new highs when this happened.
Why?
Because the perfect product from Wall Street's point of view is a product that fails and needs to be redosed.
Right?
The speculation earlier in the year was these are going to last forever.
People aren't going to need many boosters.
That was actually bad for the company stocks.
Good for the company stocks is you need a booster.
Right?
Planned obsolescence.
You need a booster.
It's like the iPhone, except it goes in your body and forces your cells to do something.
Okay.
Fauci, Biden, who knows what Biden thinks?
Who knows what, if anything, Biden is thinking.
But Fauci understands.
He's not dumb.
He knows what's going on.
He knows that what he thought in April and May is wrong.
These are not going to last forever.
You're going to need boosters.
He goes to Biden, and in late, I think it was August 20th, the date's in the book, I think, but Biden says, time for your boosters.
We're going to give boosters to everybody after eight months.
There's only one problem.
These vaccines were approved on a two-dose schedule, okay?
You get two doses.
You're done.
It's not a therapeutic.
It's not a drug that your doctor prescribes to you.
You know what?
I feel depressed.
I'm going to give you an antidepressant for a month and we'll reconsider in a month.
You know, I have high cholesterol.
Try the statin for three months.
We'll take your blood again at the end of three months.
We'll see how it goes.
No, that's not what these are supposed to be.
Supposed to be, you get it, you're done.
And the vaccine fanatics will say, oh, well, you know, the tetanus shot, sometimes people get after a 10-year boost.
10 years is very different than eight months.
And that's, you know, there's been so much sort of, I hate to say misinformation, but misinformation about why these vaccines are really so different.
So Biden does this, okay?
He promises the world or the United States, we're all going to get boosters.
And two of the most senior FDA officials who are in charge of vaccine approval resign within two weeks.
Okay?
They resign and they write a letter with other people to The Lancet, which is probably the best medical journal in the world, saying, we don't think boosters are a good idea for the general population.
And somehow the media...
Well, yeah, there are a few stories about this.
Can you imagine if Donald Trump...
Had said something so out of line about vaccines that two of his most senior FDA officials resigned within a couple weeks?
The Democrats would be ready to impeach him.
joe rogan
Well, then Biden, or yeah, he went and took a booster on television.
alex berenson
Yeah, okay.
Good for him.
He's 78 years old.
Maybe it makes sense for him.
Okay?
Should some 30-year-old or 40 or 50 or even 60-year-old be on a treadmill of boosters?
joe rogan
But this is the question.
This is why it leads to...
It's a conundrum.
Because if the vaccines do greatly...
Reduce in their efficacy over six, seven, eight months.
And the FDA says no boosters.
So that means you have no protection.
So here we are, eight months after people are being vaccinated, they're giving no recommendation to take a booster.
So it means you basically took a vaccine for nothing.
alex berenson
That's right.
That's right.
And they don't want to admit it.
That's right.
joe rogan
So by the FDA pulling their recommendation for booster shots, they've essentially said, do nothing?
Well, now we're in this position where Pfizer and Merck are both about to release a therapeutic.
alex berenson
And Merck, the data on the Merck drug is actually quite good.
They released it.
And by the way, the stocks of the vaccine companies went down more than 10% the day the Merck reports came out.
Because Wall Street said, oh, there's an actual therapeutic.
So we're not going to be able to jam these boosters into people's arms forever.
joe rogan
But now, these therapeutics, do they have an emergency use authorization, or do they have to go through the full approval process?
alex berenson
Well, that's going to be an interesting question.
joe rogan
Probably, I think, Merck has indicated it wants an EUA, and should get an EUA. And this drug, do we have data on potential side effects?
alex berenson
So the top line data, again, this is what got us into trouble last year because the companies released this top line data that looked really good.
We have top line data showing that hospitalizations were less than, I believe it was less than half in the people who received the drug.
joe rogan
They decreased them by half, right?
alex berenson
That's correct.
And deaths were eight in people who received the placebo, zero in people who received the drug.
And the side effect data was higher in people who received the placebo.
Now that's top line, but it looks really good.
But let me go back.
joe rogan
That's great.
alex berenson
It's great.
So Fauci and Biden say something based on next to no data.
And the FDA, the vaccine, again, the people in the FDA whose job it is to approve vaccines say...
We are so troubled by this.
I mean, they didn't explicitly say why they were resigning, but we know they resigned within weeks and then wrote a letter saying, we don't think vaccines should be approved.
Then the FDA... Holds a committee meeting in mid-September.
It's one of the last things in the book.
I managed to get in there.
Where they vote 16 to 2 not to approve boosters for the general population.
It is an incredible black eye.
I thought it was 15 to 3. I think it might be or 16 to 3. I think it was one of those.
It was a landslide.
joe rogan
Yeah.
alex berenson
Okay.
joe rogan
I might be wrong.
alex berenson
We can look it up or not.
joe rogan
I might have been repeating it incorrectly and have it in my head the wrong way.
Find out what the vote was.
alex berenson
So the FDA says no boosters for the general population.
joe rogan
16 to 2?
unidentified
16 to 2. So the FDA says no boosters.
alex berenson
Not no boosters at all.
No boosters for the general population.
joe rogan
So do they say no boosters but we recommend?
alex berenson
Then they say we're going to okay these for people 65 and over and quote unquote at high risk.
Okay.
Which was clearly a sop to the administration.
joe rogan
So 65 and over plus high risk and Yes.
Both those things are Keith Oldman, right?
unidentified
Isn't he?
I don't know.
alex berenson
He certainly looked at...
He might be suffering...
joe rogan
He just might be crazy.
alex berenson
He might be crazy.
Okay.
Then the CDC has to get involved.
Okay.
So normally, once the FDA approves, then it's a drug that your doctor can prescribe to you.
In this case, with vaccines, there's something called the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices that the CDC runs.
And those guys meet a few days after, men and women, I should say.
They meet a few days after the FDA, and they vote 9 to 6. That they actually want a tighter rule than the FDA. They only want it for older people, not for these people at high risk.
joe rogan
Why is that?
alex berenson
Because what the FDA was saying was not just high risk of complications from COVID, but high risk of getting COVID. And this was going to be a backdoor way to let teachers, who actually aren't at high risk of getting COVID, but nurses, healthcare workers...
joe rogan
You don't think teachers are at high risk of getting COVID? Nope.
alex berenson
There's very strong evidence that they're not.
joe rogan
But they're constantly around children.
alex berenson
Yeah, but children don't spread COVID at all.
I mean, I shouldn't say at all.
joe rogan
They gave it to my wife, rather.
alex berenson
It's much more likely your wife gave it to them.
joe rogan
No, no, no, no.
alex berenson
There's really, really good data on this.
joe rogan
No, no, no, no.
I 100% know.
They were both sick first.
One of them actually recovered, and the second one got sick, and then my wife got it after them.
alex berenson
It can happen.
I'm telling you, this data, it's been clear.
joe rogan
How is that possible, though, if kids are sick that they're not spreading it?
alex berenson
Because they clear it so fast.
It's not the flu.
joe rogan
Yeah, but my kids had it for a couple days.
alex berenson
They're weaklings.
joe rogan
They're weaklings.
How dare you?
How dare you?
alex berenson
Most kids, it's barely a cold.
They don't even know.
joe rogan
Well, one of them, it was barely a cold.
But the other one, she was sick.
She didn't feel good for two days.
Two solid days.
alex berenson
And she spread it to your wife along the way.
joe rogan
Yes.
alex berenson
That is unusual.
unidentified
Really?
alex berenson
Yes.
I mean, we don't want to pull up every scientific paper that's ever been written, but there is chapter and verse on this.
So teachers, and there's a paper from Finland.
joe rogan
But it just makes sense, though, that if children are getting it and they're sick, even if it's for a day, it seems like it could possibly spread to the parents.
And if the parents are high risk, or if the teacher's high risk...
alex berenson
Sure.
I mean, it's possible.
joe rogan
There's a lot of obese teachers out there, right?
Right.
alex berenson
I don't know.
That's not what I think of as a teacher.
joe rogan
I was watching a video of an obese teacher who was complaining about the fact that she has to go back to school because she's worried about her life and her safety.
It's one of those unhinged rants with a mask on, by the way.
alex berenson
Was her name Keith Olbermann?
unidentified
No.
joe rogan
She wasn't that unhinged.
alex berenson
The CDC committee says, 9-6, we want tighter rules.
65 and older only, and people at high risk of complications not getting it.
Not this backdoor way.
And then what happens?
Rochelle Walensky, the head of the CDC, overrules her own committee's recommendation.
And so now you can walk into the CVS and say, I'm a teacher, I'm at high risk, or I'm whatever, I'm a nurse, and I want a booster.
joe rogan
So it's up to your discretion?
alex berenson
Yes, it's up to your discretion.
joe rogan
If you're high risk, if you deem yourself to be high risk.
alex berenson
Yeah, I don't know if there's specific categories of people, but yes, I think if you deem yourself to be high risk, you can go get yourself a booster.
joe rogan
Well, isn't that different though than in the FDA recommendation though?
Like if you allow people to make their own decision Sure.
alex berenson
Except that in New York City right now, you need to have been vaccinated to go to a restaurant, as we talked about.
Now, that's for now two doses.
joe rogan
And it may be three.
unidentified
No boost.
alex berenson
That's right.
joe rogan
Like what they're doing in Israel.
alex berenson
That's right.
joe rogan
Whereas in Israel, they don't consider you fully vaccinated until you get a third shot.
alex berenson
That's correct.
joe rogan
And the data on third shots is very small.
alex berenson
That's right.
What we know, based on the Israeli experience, and again, like...
This is why you need randomized trials.
You can't just look at large populations because you don't know sort of internally who's getting that third dose, who's getting the second dose.
But what it looks like from Israel is you do get this short-term bump in antibodies.
And in the short run, that leads to people who've gotten the third dose not being in the hospital as much.
joe rogan
I was seeing something on the Johnson& Johnson vaccine that the second dose imparts 94% effectiveness up to two months out.
alex berenson
Yes.
joe rogan
It's pretty good.
alex berenson
It's pretty good.
It's just like Pfizer or Moderna.
joe rogan
Right, but it's a different thing because it's supposed to be a one shot.
So if you get that, you're getting one shot of the J&J and then eight months later you get another one shot of the J&J. Is that more effective or less effective than the boosters when you're taking a third shot of Pfizer?
alex berenson
So we're kind of talking about a couple things.
So J&J did a big clinical trial where they did two doses.
The initial clinical trial they did was one dose, and that got compared to the Pfizer and Moderna two doses, and it looked like J&J was not as effective.
Jane Day at the same time ran another clinical trial that was two doses of its own medicine, no Moderna or Pfizer.
Okay.
And when you do that, it looks like it's just as effective as the two-dose Pfizer-Moderna.
The problem is the same problem as we have with the mRNA vaccines.
We don't know how long that efficacy lasts.
joe rogan
What do you think about people that are saying we should combine vaccines?
alex berenson
I think that this is all...
It's all...
It's all...
It's all made up.
Okay?
It's not...
We are...
When you get a vaccine that works as a vaccine is intended to, you don't have any of these questions.
You are permanently protected from the disease, whether it's measles.
I mean, again, permanently, we can argue and say, okay, you know, 25 years later, one person in 10,000 winds up getting measles.
joe rogan
Yeah, but we keep going back to the flu shot, which is...
alex berenson
Yeah, but the flu shot doesn't...
joe rogan
Is it a vaccine?
alex berenson
Yes, but it's not very effective.
joe rogan
Right.
So this is kind of like that.
alex berenson
Yeah, except the side effects are off the charts compared to the flu vaccine.
The flu vaccine is basically water for most people.
joe rogan
What do you think the VAERS data shows?
alex berenson
It shows that this thing is extremely, by the standards of other vaccines, extremely dangerous.
If it were a therapeutic, would this...
With this level of side effects and this level of protection, I don't think it would be approved.
Forget whether we'd be arguing whether we needed mandates.
I don't think this could be approved if it were not called a vaccine.
joe rogan
My concern is whether or not the reporting is accurate.
Do you think the reporting is accurate?
Because the VAERS data, if we're just going by that data, you think it wouldn't be approved.
But is that data accurate?
alex berenson
So listen, the vaccine fanatics like to say VAERS is a voluntary reporting system.
Anybody can report anything.
It doesn't prove that the vaccine is actually dangerous.
joe rogan
Right.
It could be over-reported.
alex berenson
That's true.
Look, I've read a lot of VAERS reports.
There's a few that are clearly fake, that some people have thrown in to try to...
I think in most cases, actually, I think they've been thrown in by pro-vaccine people to try to embarrass people like me.
If you fool me into reporting it, then you can say, oh, look, Berenson reported that three eight-year-olds died on the same day from the vaccine.
It's nonsense, right?
So I'm actually pretty careful about using VAERS data.
It is also clear to me that most of those reports are made in good faith And they show what they say they show.
They have lots of detail.
And that doesn't mean, by the way, it doesn't mean that everybody who has a side effect following a vaccine or who has a negative event following the vaccine, that the vaccine has caused the negative event.
Let me give you a good example.
There's this big question about whether or not the vaccines can cause miscarriages.
Not infertility, okay?
I don't think there's any evidence right now that the vaccines cause infertility.
There is some animal evidence early on that the vaccines can cause miscarriages.
joe rogan
What animal evidence is this?
alex berenson
It's from rat dams in the preclinical work.
And it was reported in the Moderna and actually the Pfizer European data.
There's something called the European Medicines Agency, the EMA, and they posted more complete data than our FDA did, and that showed that there were these rat dams that had more deaths in people, in the rats that were vaccinated, more miscarriages, I should say, in the rats that were vaccinated than those that weren't.
joe rogan
What was the ratio?
alex berenson
It was about 2 to 1 or 3 to 1. Really?
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, listen, it's rats.
It's a high—I should say it was 2 to 1. So what they do is they count—they look at the, like, number of, I guess, live—I don't know how they would— It was about 15% of rat pregnancies in vaccinated rats miscarried and 7% in rats that didn't receive a vaccine.
So 15%.
Let me start again because I want to be right about this.
I think you count live births.
I think that's actually how they do it.
We could find this, but it's way, way buried in this file.
So you count live rat births.
You impregnate the rats, and then you give some of them a vaccine, and you give some of them a placebo, and then the rats have their little rat babies, and you see who's alive and who's not.
joe rogan
And do they give them a ratio of the vaccine that's proportionate?
alex berenson
No, I think it's higher.
It's like...
I don't know how much higher, but it's significantly higher than humans would receive.
Because this is not meant to prove anything.
It's meant to sort of be an avenue for exploration.
And obviously what you're hoping is, you know, no matter how much you give, the same percentage of rat babies will be born dead in both arms.
In this case, in both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, double the number of rats were born dead in the vaccine arm as in the placebo arm.
And so that's a signal.
It doesn't prove anything.
It's just a little signal.
But here's something else we know.
Pregnancy is a vascular event, right?
The woman is feeding this fetus.
It requires a lot of cell growth.
It requires a lot of, like, you know, there's increases in blood volume.
There's all kinds of stuff that happens to women when they're pregnant, right?
It's a major metabolic event.
Some women get diabetes when they're pregnant.
It can happen.
These vaccines appear, to the extent they have side effects, those side effects are centered around the cardiovascular system, right?
Because we know, as you said earlier, the spike protein and SARS-CoV-2 in general have effects on the endothelium, on the lining of your vasculature, the walls, okay?
One wouldn't be shocked to find that in some cases, perhaps...
A vascular event could lead to problems for fetal growth.
I'm not saying that's happening.
I'm just saying theoretically, there's sort of a biological plausibility there.
Okay.
So, there are a bunch of reports in VAERS of miscarriages following the vaccine.
In some cases, very shortly following the vaccine.
Okay?
Here's what else we know.
Miscarriage is very common, especially early on in pregnancy.
Sometimes women miscarrying don't even know they were pregnant.
So when you give something to lots and lots of people and it's a common event, you're going to have lots and lots of cases.
What I'm saying is that when people email me and they do regularly email me and say, do you think the vaccine causes miscarriage?
I say, I don't know.
Because that's the best answer.
And I say sometimes now because there's been a couple studies out of Israel actually and the U.S. where they've looked at sort of large cohorts of pregnant women and they haven't found excess miscarriages.
Okay?
That doesn't mean Again, because it's not a randomized trial, there could be that the women who got the vaccine tend to take better care of themselves in general and had a lower miscarriage base rate and that got pushed up.
We don't know.
What I'm saying is all this stuff is incredibly complicated.
But when the director of the CDC or when Twitter or whoever says...
We know these things are safe.
We know there's no infertility risk.
We know there's no miscarriages.
They are lying.
Okay?
It doesn't mean that I'm saying I know there is a risk.
What it means is the correct answer is there's a lot we don't understand about this, and it's early days.
And to tell pregnant women who are at very low risk of death from COVID, very low, that they need to take this is wrong.
joe rogan
Why do you think they're urging pregnant women to take it?
Because I have seen that, that COVID while you're pregnant is exceptionally dangerous.
alex berenson
That's a lie.
What they're doing is they're comparing the risk of a pregnant woman with COVID to the risk of a non-pregnant woman of the same age with COVID. The reason...
So there is a slight excess risk, but it's off a baseline that's almost too low to be measured.
A 25-year-old woman who gets COVID is at, again, basically no risk unless she's morbidly obese.
joe rogan
What if she's a 38-year-old woman that has COVID and pregnant?
alex berenson
Still at very, very low risk.
Not zero.
Very, very low.
So I think that for whatever reason, there's just a societal campaign that these people have convinced themselves that everyone needs the shot.
joe rogan
What bothers me, and it seems to be a real thing, is that there is a real resistance to not just accepting, but even the distribution of possible therapeutics other than the vaccine.
A big one being the monoclonal antibodies, where Biden actually restricted the amount that went to Florida and Texas Yeah, you're right.
alex berenson
It's insane.
DeSantis has been – he's followed the science better than any other political leader, elected official.
And somebody told him or he looked at the data himself.
He realized that the monoclonal antibodies work.
They work like the Merck drug works.
We have real evidence.
This is the thing.
I'm not out there saying homeopathic remedies are going to get you out of...
You need treatments for this.
And you're right.
joe rogan
But it's bizarre that they've been hesitant and resisting them, in fact.
alex berenson
Yeah!
It's bizarre.
It's bizarre that ivermectin hasn't been properly tested.
It's bizarre that vitamin D hasn't been properly tested or zinc.
Or there's an antidepressant, weirdly enough, that seems to show some efficacy.
Fluvoxamine, it's called.
We could have tested all of these things a year ago.
We haven't.
joe rogan
Yeah, is it just because there's just this mad scramble to get the vaccines out and because the vaccines were thought to be the savior of this pandemic that all of our eggs are in that one basket?
alex berenson
You know, look...
I don't understand.
I don't.
And that's the best explanation, actually, because that's not the one that's like, oh, they want to depopulate everybody or, you know, it's all Pfizer.
joe rogan
I've heard that one.
alex berenson
I know you've heard that one.
joe rogan
That one gets weird.
alex berenson
It gets weird.
joe rogan
I heard that one from a doctor.
alex berenson
People go down rabbit holes, okay?
So there's that edge.
And then I'd say there's like the middle conspiracy theories, which is like Pfizer just owns the FDA. Well, Pfizer doesn't own the FDA, but they're a big, powerful company.
And they have 24 lobbying groups in Washington, apparently.
And they're making a few billion dollars a year off these vaccines.
joe rogan
Did you see that the woman from the CDC is now talking about gun violence?
alex berenson
No.
She's moved on.
Good.
joe rogan
It was the strangest thing.
alex berenson
Is it related to COVID? COVID causes gun violence?
joe rogan
No, not at all.
I just don't understand how the Center for Disease Control...
alex berenson
Oh, they've been talking about this for a while.
joe rogan
But, like, publicly?
unidentified
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
joe rogan
About gun violence?
alex berenson
Yeah, yeah, they're super woke on this.
joe rogan
Oh, woke?
alex berenson
Yeah, yeah.
joe rogan
Are they talking about obesity?
alex berenson
No.
I mean, yes, but they'll talk about obesity when they have it.
joe rogan
Are they talking about diet and heart disease?
alex berenson
You know, once in a while.
joe rogan
But that seems like something they should talk about since those are diseases.
alex berenson
Yeah, well, gun violence, you know, it's an epidemic.
joe rogan
Right, but not in comparison.
I know, but I mean, numbers-wise, if you look at the people that die from guns versus the people that die from heart attacks...
alex berenson
But your explanation is the least conspiratorial, right?
It's that a bunch of people made kind of bad decisions early on based on panic, and one of the decisions they made is we have to get these vaccines out at any cost without, you know, we're going to speed the test, warp speed, and we're going to have a chance to really change human history.
For the first time ever, we are going to crash an epidemic in its tracks.
We are going to use this new technology.
It is going to be great.
It's going to be Nobel Prizes and billions for everybody.
joe rogan
Yeah, and they stuck to that narrative.
alex berenson
And they stuck to that narrative, and unfortunately, human biology and the virus are not cooperating.
joe rogan
I was absolutely fascinated when the FDA retracted its recommendation for the booster shot because my thought was, now what?
Because this is like a real quagmire.
alex berenson
That's right.
joe rogan
To get into that position where you're saying, I don't think there's evidence for a booster when there's also evidence that the drug or the vaccine rather stops working.
Yeah.
alex berenson
Well, this is why they're blaming the unvaccinated.
joe rogan
Yeah, but that thing doesn't even make sense.
alex berenson
I know!
joe rogan
It's like, you know, you've seen the memes.
Like, you know, you're saying that you being protected, you're in danger from the unprotected, but you're protected.
alex berenson
Right.
joe rogan
So they need to be protected, too, so that you're protected.
unidentified
Right.
alex berenson
Yeah, I know.
joe rogan
But then I've also heard that there's people that believe that the variants are being caused by the vaccinated people or the unvaccinated people.
alex berenson
Right.
joe rogan
And then I've had explained to me that no, it's actually...
Probably what's happening is when you vaccinate people for a very specific spike protein that the virus selects for the variants and that it finds where there is no immunity and that those variants then propagate.
alex berenson
Yes.
The vaccine reduces the genomic diversity of the virus and causes it, as you say, to select for mutations that are going to enable it to beat the vaccine.
joe rogan
But the idea also is that these variants actually came from a place where there's low vaccination rates, which is even weirder.
And then it was explained to me that no...
All sorts of things cause viruses to mutate.
Viruses are constantly mutating.
And the vaccines, whether it's vaccinated or unvaccinated, it's just one or two factors in this incredible equation of billions of people that are infected by a similar virus.
alex berenson
Billions of people with trillions of virions, viral particles, and this thing is kind of sloppy and makes mistakes when it's replicating.
Delta came from India, we think.
Again, we're not allowed to talk about where things came from anymore, but Delta came from- Can you call it the Indian virus?
joe rogan
Are you allowed to say that or do you get racist?
alex berenson
You used to be able to.
joe rogan
It was the Indian- The Spanish flu, remember?
alex berenson
That's right.
But Delta came from India at a time when almost nobody was vaccinated.
But that doesn't mean that the vaccine didn't help make it more common.
It may have had characteristics that an unvaccinated population wouldn't have allowed it to take over the way it did in vaccinated populations.
We don't know.
This is complicated.
joe rogan
It's very complicated.
But it's very contagious in unvaccinated people.
alex berenson
And in vaccinated people.
joe rogan
And in vaccinated people.
alex berenson
So I put up a paper on my sub stack two days ago, actually yesterday, out of Israel.
I hate to make it sound like the Israelis are the only ones who are doing anything, but they are doing a lot.
joe rogan
Why are they doing things differently?
alex berenson
Well, no, it's not that they're doing things differently.
It's that they appear to be a little bit less political.
joe rogan
Yeah, but that's what I'm saying.
alex berenson
So, I mean, not that their government isn't very pro-vaccine.
It's very, look, you got this green pass where you're going to need a third dose.
But they have scientists out there who, for whatever reason, are reporting stuff in a less, I would say, in a more transparent way.
And that's true in the UK, too.
Here, I mean, you know, you asked me about the mayor of Austin.
Look, it is entirely clear that Fauci lied about lots of stuff.
joe rogan
Yeah.
alex berenson
He lied.
joe rogan
Including gain-of-function research.
alex berenson
Oh, God, did he lie about that?
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
Which is stunning that he did that in front of Congress.
alex berenson
In front of Congress!
Yeah.
And we didn't even...
You know, we started with that.
That was an hour and a half ago.
I mean, this is one of the problems with the show.
Like, I'm going to go in whatever time I'm going to go.
Like, we could talk.
We could talk for 24 hours straight.
We could do, like, a COVID 24-hour marathon.
There's so much to talk about.
So...
Not this month, because now it's October.
In September, there were two major document dumps that came out about Wuhan, okay?
And the second one, actually, is the most important one.
This showed that the EcoHealth Alliance, unless these documents are made up, and I do not believe they're made up, and Daszak, who is the head of EcoHealth, has not said they're made up, and presumably he would.
He hasn't threatened to sue anybody.
Internal documents from EcoHealth from 2018 showed that they were considering, and not just considering, they made a proposal to DARPA, which is the Pentagon Defense Advanced Projects Research Agency.
They made a proposal to spend $14 million infecting bats, In Wuhan with a spike protein that was optimized to attack humans.
I mean, it's so insane.
It sounds conspiratorial.
It sounds like I made that up, but I didn't.
There it is.
joe rogan
Leaked grant proposal details high-risk coronavirus research.
The proposal rejected by the U.S. military research agency DARPA, which, by the way, they're making robots that can think for themselves and shoot missiles.
alex berenson
That's right!
joe rogan
Describes the insertion of human-specific cleavage sites into SARS-related bat coronaviruses.
alex berenson
I mean, you can't make this up?
joe rogan
No, you can't make this up.
And this eco-health alliance was funded by the NIH, which then, in turn, worked with the Wuhan lab.
alex berenson
That's right.
And so DARPA, which as you say, they make robots that can shoot people.
This was too risky for them.
joe rogan
Yeah, they're like, oh, that shit's crazy, son.
alex berenson
Yeah, that's right.
So by the way, the Chinese, okay, they got a few bucks themselves these days.
Do you think that when DARPA didn't fund this, maybe like the Chinese government didn't fund it themselves?
We don't know.
One reason we don't know, because I'm going to not curse.
I promised myself, even though this is a curse-happy environment, I told myself I'm going to be the higher mammal today.
I'm not going to curse.
Tony Fauci, in February, beginning in February 2020, when this thing had just come out of Wuhan, shockingly, became involved in a campaign to discourage anyone from investigating the lab leak and saying that anyone who did Okay.
And who was his best buddy on that campaign?
Peter Daszak.
Okay.
This got so bad that last week, finally, the Lancet had a commission to investigate the origins of COVID-19.
Who was part of the commission?
Peter Daszak!
So finally, the guy who was in charge of the commission said, we have to disband this because it looks like there might be an appearance of a conflict of interest.
Oh, really?
You hired OJ to investigate Nicole Brown Simpson's death.
Was that an appearance of a conflict of interest, too?
They're insane.
It's all been happening in plain sight.
joe rogan
Yeah, it's not hidden at all.
And that's why when Rand Paul confronts Fauci about it and then most recently confronted that lawyer who was responsible for calling people who believe in natural immunity inferred by previous infection, he equated those people to flat earthers.
And then Fauci, or Rand Paul rather, is questioning him and talking to him about this.
Like, do you have a medical degree?
Do you have any scientific background at all?
No, you're just a lawyer.
And how are you getting away with saying this?
And the guy literally had no answer.
alex berenson
No answer.
Fauci.
Here's the thing.
Here's the thing about Fauci.
joe rogan
I like how you're whispering.
alex berenson
You've got to go back to his public statements the last 30 years.
He's such a megalomaniac.
He's such a megalomaniac.
And it sneaks out from—he's kind of like this—you know, he's like—he wants to sort of be—to have this, like, air of science about him.
And, yeah, I mean, obviously he's a smart guy.
He understands science.
But, you know, wearing the lab coat, he used to do that a lot more.
joe rogan
Just wear the lab coat everywhere.
To restaurants and shit.
alex berenson
I think he used to.
But every once in a while what he really thinks about himself sneaks out, and he's a megalomania.
joe rogan
Well, you heard the third-person thing.
alex berenson
No.
joe rogan
You didn't hear what he said?
unidentified
No.
joe rogan
When you're criticizing...
alex berenson
Oh, when he was Fauci, you criticized science.
Yes!
joe rogan
He said his name.
alex berenson
Yeah, that's always a bad sign.
I thought only athletes were allowed to do that.
unidentified
When you're criticizing Anthony Fauci, you're criticizing science itself.
alex berenson
Yes.
Yes.
He believes that.
joe rogan
That's a crazy thing to say.
alex berenson
It's a crazy thing to say.
joe rogan
An absolutely crazy thing to say from someone who's been proven to have lied in front of Congress.
alex berenson
Yes!
So he, and I think we talked about this a little bit off air before.
So the HIV story is an interesting story.
And it's actually a story of medicine working and science working, right?
joe rogan
Eventually.
alex berenson
Eventually, but not that long.
joe rogan
AZT though.
alex berenson
Yeah, but there's these people out there who think AZT killed a whole bunch of people.
The truth is AZT actually is still used in some of these regimens.
It's just that AZT by itself doesn't stop the virus.
It can't.
You need multiple.
joe rogan
Wasn't AZT something that they used for chemotherapy?
unidentified
Yes.
alex berenson
It's a very toxic chemo drug.
joe rogan
Yeah, they stopped using it because it was killing people quick.
alex berenson
Yes, but you've got to remember, untreated HIV has a 90% plus fatality rate.
It is incredibly lethal.
joe rogan
Ooh, the 10% savages are surviving.
alex berenson
I think it's even closer to 95 to 99. I mean, there's a few people somehow, there are miracle immune systems who clear it, but it kills almost everybody.
So Fauci, in the 80s, You know, there's this—it's a plague, right?
And it's hurting—who's it hurting the most?
It's hurting gay people and it's hurting intravenous drug users, marginalized people.
So Fauci basically starts lying about that and says, you know—he wasn't the only one.
But there was this idea, like, if in the public health, if we tell the truth, then no one's going to want to fund research.
You know, Americans are so evil.
They won't do anything to help these people.
You know, I don't think that was true, actually, even then.
It's certainly not true now.
But so Fauci, you know, pretends that, like, this is a disease that anybody can get.
You know, you walk into a disco, you walk out with the wrong guy, you're going to get HIV. You know, very, very, very rare.
Okay.
Fauci realizes that the activists can be on his side if he's nice to them, and that's a good thing.
Why is it a good thing?
Well, it's a good thing for a couple of reasons.
It means his scientists aren't going to have to worry about getting blood thrown at them.
It means that he's got a large pool of people with HIV who are willing to participate in clinical trials.
But why is it good for Anthony Fauci?
It's good for Anthony Fauci because all these really organized people are going to tell Congress to give him more money.
And over the next few years, Fauci's budget for research goes from like $300 million to $5 billion.
By the early aughts, the U.S. was spending more money on HIV research than almost anything – or more money, I should say, on his unit of the NIH than, I believe, any other unit except cancer.
joe rogan
That's a weird statement, the early aughts.
Is that the early 2000s?
alex berenson
The early 2000s.
unidentified
Okay.
alex berenson
So his budget goes from like $300 million a year to $5 billion a year, which basically he controls.
It's a huge kitty for him.
But what's the good news in all this?
The good news is that the companies, the pharma companies, and the government researchers and academia got together and came up with treatments for HIV. We should not forget that.
We basically solved HIV. Very few people in the United...
Not nobody, but very few people die from this thing anymore when it killed 95% of the people who got it early on.
And Fauci has gotten a ton of credit for that, even though he's not really a bench scientist.
He didn't really invent any of the drugs or anything, but he did manage the politics of it.
He's really good at managing the politics of things.
So my view on him is that when this came along, he had two concerns.
One was to make sure he didn't get blamed for the gain-of-function stuff.
And it's pretty clear, again, very early on, that he was aware that this might have come out of a lab.
But the other thing is, Tony Fauci can get his Nobel Prize now.
How's he going to get it?
He's going to get it by solving the epidemic, by leading the development of a vaccine to market.
Not just a therapeutic that helps cure it, a vaccine that makes it go away.
And so basically since February or March of 2020, the U.S. government has been focused on vaccines as the answer to the detriment of almost everything else.
And unfortunately, that would have been fine if the vaccines had worked as we hoped they would, but they don't.
joe rogan
So it's a bunch of different factors all combining together to put us in the position we're in.
It's him, it's his history, and it's also the amount of money that's generated by the propagation of these vaccines.
And, you know, the ignoring of all the other possible therapeutics, including emergency use authorization ones like the monoclonal antibodies.
alex berenson
Correct.
joe rogan
Because the narrative is get everyone vaccinated.
alex berenson
Correct.
joe rogan
Even to the point of ignoring the data that shows that people who have had a previous infection recovered actually have superior antibodies than people who have been vaccinated.
They still are trying to require those people to get vaccinated, including people that risk their lives on the front lines.
The hospital workers that got COVID, survived it, have better immunity, and now are being forced out of their jobs because they don't want to get shot.
alex berenson
That's right.
And ignoring the data that says, you know what, after a few months your antibodies go away.
And ignoring the data that says we don't have, you know, we've had a dozen people or two dozen people or three dozen people with boosters and now we're going to tell the whole world to get them.
Ignoring all of this.
I mean, look, so I got so much shit from the left.
Oh, I cursed.
joe rogan
You fucked up the whole show.
alex berenson
Couldn't do it.
joe rogan
But you get shit on Twitter.
You say from the left, but it's really from Twitter.
And Twitter is a mental institution where people are throwing shit at each other all day.
That's what they do.
alex berenson
But no, here's what I like.
So yeah, I got a lot of grief from the left.
And I said grief that time.
I don't know why this has become something for me today.
joe rogan
Jamie could put a beep over that shit if you'd like.
alex berenson
I cursed on the show all the time last time.
joe rogan
Why do you want to not do it this time?
alex berenson
I don't know.
I've got this OCD about it.
joe rogan
You're not even wearing a suit or anything.
unidentified
I know!
alex berenson
You're dressed like a normal person.
I know.
I was going to wear...
And then I was like, what am I doing?
Like...
joe rogan
You're in a position.
You're in a weird position.
alex berenson
I'm in a weird position.
I want to be taken seriously, right?
unidentified
I understand.
alex berenson
So I shouldn't be wearing a Kermit the Frog t-shirt, which is what I had on.
joe rogan
Is that a Kermit the Frog shirt?
unidentified
No, no.
alex berenson
I had one that I was like, I'm going to- Oh, you can't wear Kermit the Frog.
I can't wear Kermit the Frog.
joe rogan
We can't wear any frogs because of the whole Pepe the Frog thing.
alex berenson
Oh, God.
joe rogan
You know?
If you have a frog, you're signaling to the right.
alex berenson
Oh, my God.
These rules.
joe rogan
Don't you know about the frog?
alex berenson
I knew about Pepe, but Kermit is...
joe rogan
Too close to Pepe.
alex berenson
Is that true?
joe rogan
I would imagine.
unidentified
Oh, God.
joe rogan
Well, Kermit sips tea and, like, mocks things, too, sometimes.
Don't you know that there's a meme of Kermit sipping tea?
You've seen that, right, Jamie?
Jamie's the most inside.
He knows all that shit.
alex berenson
I know.
I know you're joking.
joe rogan
He knows the guy who made QAnon.
He knows him.
He knows him personally.
Mr. Q? Yeah, he knows him.
alex berenson
Don't even.
You're going to get in trouble.
joe rogan
I'm joking.
alex berenson
So people on the right were attacking me, though, when I had the balls.
joe rogan
Why were they attacking you?
alex berenson
Because they viewed it as—so people on the left were terrified of COVID, right?
unidentified
Right.
alex berenson
Terrified.
Out of their minds.
Terrified of COVID. I'm not going outside.
I'm not letting my kids outside.
My kids aren't going to school.
They ruined their lives for more than a year.
Right?
And then the vaccines came.
The vaccines will save us all.
Lordy, lordy.
Okay?
It truly was a religious cult around these things for the people on the left.
Okay.
The people on the right weren't so scared.
For the most part, they had a better idea.
And I'm not talking about ordinary folks.
I'm talking about the K-Streeters, the Mitch McConnells of the world.
It was, you know what?
I don't really understand the science of this, but if this is going to get us out of this nonsense, okay.
And so a lot of people on the right were happy to go along with the vaccines without looking at the data too much.
So who does that leave?
It leaves like me and a few other people who are going to be the flies in the ointment who are going to be like...
You know, guys, Pfizer actually only enrolled six people over 85 in this trial, and those are the people who die from COVID. So maybe we don't actually know how well the vaccines work.
And VAERS is getting so badly beaten up by all the side effect reports, it keeps crashing.
And maybe that actually means something.
Maybe it's not just a bunch of anti-vaxxers doing it for kicks.
Maybe it's actually people who've had, you know, myocarditis.
joe rogan
Do you know anyone?
alex berenson
Who's suffered vaccine?
Yes, I actually do know.
I don't know any—well, I mean, I know people now because people come to me.
But personally, I don't know anybody who's had a really serious COVID case.
But I do know of someone who's had what I believe is a very serious vaccine injury.
Again, you can't prove it, but that's my belief.
And this is a relative.
So people got themselves locked in to the narrative, but what they never understood, and I say this at the end of the book, what they never understood was It wasn't.
The choice is not vaccines or pandemic.
The choice is normal life or pandemic.
Because this thing kills probably worldwide somewhere between two and three out of every thousand people it infects.
You know, in the U.S., it's a little bit more because in the U.S., you know, we're older compared to, let's say, Africa and we're fatter compared to Europe.
So we might be at three per thousand.
There is no reason on Earth to be turning our lives upside down for this thing.
There has never been, not since April of 2020, any evidence that That this could destroy hospitals or hospital systems.
Remember, those hospital ships that went into New York Harbor left a month later and they'd taken care of almost no one.
Okay?
I'm not saying hospitals don't get full sometimes.
I'm not saying that there's not- Hospital ships?
joe rogan
They had ships?
alex berenson
Yeah.
USS Comfort, USNS Comfort, and USNS Mercy.
joe rogan
So they pulled into New York Harbor in anticipation of an overwhelming amount of people with COVID? In New York in April 2020, a city councilman, not some rando, a city councilman said, we are going to start burying people in Central Park.
alex berenson
Okay?
That's how crazy it got.
joe rogan
He probably wanted to get reelected.
alex berenson
He actually ran for mayor and got nowhere.
unidentified
You know what I'm saying?
alex berenson
Idiot.
joe rogan
But that was back in the day also when really people did not know the actual effects of the disease.
alex berenson
That's right.
joe rogan
There was no treatment.
It was very speculative.
People were very scared.
And also there was this thought that we needed ventilators.
alex berenson
Yes, and ventilators killed people.
In New York, unquestionably.
Listen, unfortunately, by the time you get to needing a ventilator with COVID, you're pretty sick.
And some of those people are going to die, but we clearly overuse ventilators early on.
But what we should have been saying, not from the day it came out, but certainly from April 2020 was, this is manageable.
We have an advanced healthcare system.
We're going to take care of this problem without destroying our society.
And the public health establishment wouldn't do it.
The media wouldn't do it.
And clearly with the media, a lot of it was hatred of Trump.
They saw it as punishing him.
I'm not going to say clearly.
He probably, I would say, there's a better than even chance he wins the election, if not for the coronavirus.
That's certainly what the betting markets thought in January 2020. So the coronavirus destroyed his re-election, for sure.
But along the way, it got so deep into so many people, into their psyches.
It panicked so many people that it became, it seems impossible, at least not, you know, it's not down here.
Down here, people live normal lives.
But in New York, people are so crazy about this.
And the vaccines were promised as the answer.
And there's just this total unwillingness to admit that they are not working as promised.
joe rogan
What was it about this?
I mean, you've had some controversial takes on things in the past, and that's actually how we got to know each other, where I actually agreed with you, even though I'm a marijuana enthusiast.
I do know people that have had very adverse reactions to marijuana and when you had this book that came out tell your children about the dangers of marijuana there was a lot of people that were like potheads that wanted me to have you on to go after you but I was like hold on guys like this is a thing like this is a thing that I've witnessed I know people that have had psychotic episodes or schizophrenic episodes The
numbers of people that have schizophrenia, it varies.
I think they think it's one in a hundred, just naturally.
It could be that, that we're experiencing, and marijuana enhances it.
But it's certainly something that's worth discussing, and it's certainly something that, with some people, is not a good idea for them to engage in.
And we had you on with Mike Hart, who's a marijuana doctor, or prescribes it.
alex berenson
Who, by the way, is very sort of in favor of my views on COVID. Yes.
Weirdly.
joe rogan
Well, not weirdly.
I mean, I think it's hard when you go into a debate because you want to come out victorious, you have this preconceived assumption of your being correct, and you go into this thing, and I'm sure you probably expected more support from me, too.
alex berenson
Yes.
I thought you really played it neutral that day.
joe rogan
Well, I know people.
That's the problem.
I have personal experience with friends who've lost their fucking mind.
And I've had some slippery moments on marijuana, too.
Not slippery to the point where I thought I was going psychotic, but where I'm like, wow, this is scary.
You can get so paranoid and so freaked out from THC that if you had a mind that was already in trouble, that's how I would perceive it.
And I know of people, I know of one guy very clearly, there was a moment where it changed his life.
It changed his life.
He got high-dose edibles, and he's never been the same person.
Never.
And since then, he's gone further and further downhill, like flat earth, everything.
Everything.
All of the above.
He's...
And, you know, I haven't spoken to him in years, but...
He's out of his fucking mind now.
Like, legitimately.
And I don't know how much of it would have happened anyway, but I do know that a large amount of it happened because of that one day.
And I know of other people, too, that I think it happened to them, too.
alex berenson
I mean, and that's, you know, I think that's what's really, certainly the cannabis industry lobby hates that idea because it's like, if there's a risk that one day you can kind of sort of break yourself and not come back, it's one thing to have like a temporary psychosis and you recover and you know what, okay, I'm not going to use again or I'm not going to use for a while.
But if there's this realization that for some people we don't know how many and we don't know what the dose might be, that you can use one time at the wrong time and You know, possibly cause yourself some permanent injury and you don't get that back.
Obviously, that won't be great for cannabis sales.
joe rogan
Well, I think it's one of those things like alcohol, right?
Like you can drink yourself to death.
Yes.
It's very possible.
andy stumpf
It's rare that people do it.
joe rogan
Most of us have had a few drinks and we feel terrible the next day.
But there are people amongst us that have died from alcohol poisoning.
It's a real thing.
When you hear about someone that has some crazy event on marijuana, most of us just get a little high and that's it.
But the ones who have crossed over into the Netherland, you know, I've crossed over a few times.
alex berenson
But you, but for whatever reason, you're mine, you come back.
You always come back.
joe rogan
I've come back, but...
I've come back really nervous.
alex berenson
Joe Rogan says, get straight.
joe rogan
I'm a fan of reality.
I do not like delusional thinking.
I do not like deceptive thinking.
I don't like it.
Even if it challenges my preconceived notions, even if it challenges whatever narrative that I've associated myself with, and one of those narratives is that marijuana is good, but along the way in my life, seeing some people where I think that something definitely happened to them from marijuana, Led me into this place where I would be a liar if I wasn't honest about it.
And I'm not interested in being a liar.
alex berenson
This is what I don't understand.
It's funny.
This is the same thing with the vaccines.
At what point?
The hospitals have tons of vaccinated people.
We saw the British data, okay?
And I'm telling you, human biology is the same everywhere, and there's plenty of people dying, getting sick and dying who are vaccinated in the U.S.
Why can't they admit it?
Why do they have to lie about it?
joe rogan
I think it's this thing where everyone is committed to this narrative.
Like I was saying, I could have done with marijuana.
People, they identify with being a person that's on the right side.
If you're a person who got vaccinated, you did the right thing.
If you're a person who is pro-vax, you are on the right side, including like when you're seeing that vaccine mandates.
Folks, be really clear about this.
Vaccine mandates is a form of control.
That's all it is.
If you're dealing with a vaccine that you could get in January, and here we are, we're a good solid 10 months later, that shit is useless, right?
If that's the case, if that is the case, How is that okay?
How is it okay that you can have a vaccine, you can go anywhere you want, as long as you got a shot in January, but someone who got infected last month who has rock-solid antibodies can't go in there?
That is nonsense.
I have a real concern about this in the slippery slope of government control.
alex berenson
You make a great point, and I appreciate your bringing this up.
So if you're vaccinated back early on, you probably, again, this is what the Israeli data suggests.
This is what our breakthrough infection data suggests, even in the U.S. You probably have very little protection right now.
If you got infected three months ago yourself and recovered by yourself with no vaccine, or maybe you had been previously vaccinated, it doesn't matter, you have good protection right now.
Okay?
So why is the person in the first category privileged over the person in the second category?
It has nothing to do with the medical reality.
joe rogan
Well, it's a binary decision.
It's like there's a one or a zero, a good or a bad.
Get vaccinated, that's good.
And so they've decided there's too many cases, we need to get everybody vaxxed.
The mayor of New York is such a buffoon.
To have it come from him makes so much sense because he's such a dullard.
And when he proclaims this, that we're going to do this, you know, after he's like told people they can get free vaccine or free cheeseburgers with vaccines.
You see, this is not a rational decision that's based on science and based on the data, like DeSantis is making.
alex berenson
But this is, again, this is where I come back to you and I say, I do see a sociological element in this.
I see a lot of talking down to people.
And you may remember, again, back February, March, April, it was, we're going to tell those idiots they can get a lottery ticket if they're vaccinated.
unidentified
Right.
joe rogan
Well, how about fucking Keith Olbermann?
They're morons!
They're idiots!
alex berenson
They're snowflakes!
Right, but now he's angry and afraid.
Before, it was condescension.
Before, it was just...
And you can see it.
You know who's the worst of all, by the way?
John Oliver.
John Oliver is the most...
joe rogan
He's worse than Keith Olbermann?
alex berenson
Yeah, because he's just...
He's so oily and condescending.
Olbermann's just crazy.
joe rogan
Well, he was really good on community.
Is he worse than Stephen Colbert?
Stephen Colbert's dancing with needles.
alex berenson
Yeah, Colbert's right up there.
joe rogan
Have you seen that, Jamie?
You've seen that.
Have we played that before?
alex berenson
I want to see this.
joe rogan
We should play the vaccine dance.
Because, you know, like...
Have you seen that?
unidentified
No!
What is this?
alex berenson
I try to avoid these things.
joe rogan
You're in for a treat.
You're in for a treat.
Stephen Colbert, I don't know what happened.
I think they brought him to Bohemian Grove and they let him fuck the Owl God or something.
I don't know what happened.
alex berenson
All these people on the lift are so unfunny now, too.
That's a whole different issue.
joe rogan
He was brilliant when he was on Comedy Central.
When he was doing the Colbert Report, he was fucking brilliant.
It was one of the best shows on television.
That character that he developed, that Republican asshole character, was amazing.
But then he goes over...
alex berenson
But you know it's Bill O'Reilly, right?
joe rogan
It's better than Bill O'Reilly could ever hope to be.
If that was a real person, he would be the king of the world.
If he could maintain that character and run for president, he would win hands down.
Because he would control the right.
They would all fucking fall in line for him.
If they could find a guy like that with no, like, legit skeletons, you know, like no dead girls or live boys, it would be a fucking game changer.
But I mean, I think he was amazing in that character, but as the host of a talk show, he's just different.
I mean, maybe he's older and he sees things differently.
alex berenson
The left has beat the stuffing out of humor.
joe rogan
I guess.
I don't know.
I'm left-wing.
I'm still left.
I'm only right-wing on some personal freedoms and guns and a few other things, and the military, in support of the military, and support of police.
I'm very right-wing on that, but I'm very pro-choice.
I'm very pro-civil rights.
I'm very pro-gay rights.
alex berenson
By the way, this abortion law in Texas is crazy.
joe rogan
Crazy.
Crazy.
alex berenson
Preposterous.
It's preposterous!
joe rogan
Six weeks is literally like a grain of rice.
unidentified
You know what?
alex berenson
You want to outlaw abortion, outlaw it.
Don't set up this craziness of like, we're not doing it and we're going to hope the Supreme Court goes with our weirdness.
joe rogan
No, it's not good.
And I think most of us living in Texas had no idea that it was even happening until it was too late.
And then it was a wake-up call.
alex berenson
It's going to get struck down, I think.
joe rogan
One can only hope because my thought on any of these like ridiculous overreach things is they make people swing in the other direction and I think it's good to have Texas red I think and again this is coming from someone who's very liberal but I think that there's certain there's a certain rigidity and a certain like discipline and like respect for law that's involved in the right That we're really slipping on in these blue states.
And when I see all the chaos that happens in a lot of these blue cities like San Francisco, allowing people to just go into stores and steal $900 worth of shit and run out, like, it doesn't work.
You have to have accountability.
You have to have a certain amount of accountability.
You have to have a certain amount of law and order.
It's important.
It's important.
alex berenson
But one of the things, and again, this is what's so odd.
Like, these people are the same people who suddenly want vaccine mandates, right?
And they want to...
Oh, here it is.
joe rogan
You need to see this.
jamie vernon
This is a new, though, which is weird.
It's posted in June.
And everyone just saw it last week.
joe rogan
Well, nobody watches that show.
jamie vernon
Well, that's probably the reason why, but...
unidentified
Give me some wine.
joe rogan
Look at the dance.
These are needles.
So he's dancing and there's needles behind him dancing.
unidentified
It gets worse.
joe rogan
So he's doing his little dance.
Not a bad dancer.
Looks like he's having a good time, but here's the best part.
unidentified
Oh my god.
joe rogan
Dude, there's not even a song.
So he's going through the crowd.
And he finds people and they're all clapping because the applause signs are on, ladies and gentlemen.
And he grabs some old lady and he's dancing with her.
No one in this is appalled by this insane attempt at propaganda dressed up as entertainment.
Like, what is this?
Tell me what that is.
And it just ends?
Let him keep talking.
I want to hear what he says.
unidentified
And they said it couldn't get any longer.
Wow.
joe rogan
What is that?
alex berenson
I don't know.
joe rogan
Like, imagine being in a meeting.
Me, as a comedian, I imagine being in a meeting with a bunch of writers, and this is what they pitch.
You go, what?
Wait a minute?
So I'm going to dance with needles?
So you just want me to kind of, like, dance with needles and then go, vaccine!
That's it?
alex berenson
That's it?
joe rogan
That's the whole thing.
alex berenson
That's all you need to know.
joe rogan
Who's paying for this?
And you just want to pull their masks off like a Scooby-Doo episode, and it's a bunch of Pfizer execs?
You motherfuckers!
It was you all along.
I would have got away with it.
It wasn't for you meddling kids.
alex berenson
Well, they did get away with it, though, because they blocked me from Twitter.
They blocked me.
joe rogan
Who do you think blocked you?
alex berenson
This is...
Okay.
So, well, we may find out.
It'd be nice if we get a little discovery.
joe rogan
Are you going to court?
alex berenson
I am keeping my legal options open.
joe rogan
Where are you at now?
What can you say?
alex berenson
What can I say?
I can say that I am...
Okay.
unidentified
Here's...
alex berenson
Here's...
Why people think these suits can't win.
There's something called Section 230. Section 230 is part of the – it's a law.
It's like 25 years old.
It's part of the Communications Decency Act.
It gives internet companies tremendous protection against lawsuits related to their content decisions.
This is not a secret.
There's two main provisions.
And it's been totally sort of misinterpreted in a way that doesn't really make any sense but is now basically the rules.
So there's two main provisions.
Provision one says essentially – and this is really what it was designed for.
You can't be sued if you host something sort of unknowingly that's child pornography or that's like go kill my ex-wife.
You can't get in trouble for that.
joe rogan
For something you don't know about.
alex berenson
That's right.
You're not going to be considered the publisher legally for that if you do that.
And that makes sense, okay?
You know, your Twitter, you get, I don't know how many billion tweets that day they get, but it's a lot, okay?
Or Facebook or whatever, okay?
So it would be unfair to hold them legally responsible.
Then there's a second part of this that says, essentially, you can make decisions about what to host in good faith.
And you can't be held liable.
And that includes, you know, indecent or, you know, prurient.
There's certain specific statutory language or otherwise objectionable.
It includes that language, otherwise objectionable, which is not defined, even if it's constitutionally protected.
OK. So, you take those two things together.
Now, the first part has been interpreted in a way that clearly was not intended by the people who wrote the law, which is what people have said is Even though, basically, I get all the protections of the law and I get to make publishing decisions.
So, in other words, I can choose...
What it was meant to be was you can't sue me for something...
You know, Joe puts up something saying Alex is a child molester.
And I sue Twitter saying, you know, that's wrong.
And Twitter says, you know, we didn't do this.
We're not the publisher.
That clearly makes sense.
What the companies have managed to convince the courts to do is say...
I put up all this stuff about myself or about whatever, and you took it down.
And they say, you know, that's our decision.
We can choose whether or not to host any content.
Because choosing to...
protection for hosting should include protection for not hosting as a blanket principle.
That's what they've convinced the courts.
So in other words, we win.
Whether we host it, we don't host it, we have a good reason, we have no reason, we win.
You cannot sue us for any choices around this.
And this has been a position that the courts have essentially accepted.
Okay?
Okay.
And they've also said...
We're private companies.
Yes, we have power, but we're not the government.
Facebook might have two billion users a month or whatever it is, but it's not the government.
So the First Amendment does not apply to us, and the courts have accepted that.
This has proven to be a pretty strong legal barrier.
I mean, almost completely strong.
And the companies have gotten more and more aggressive about choosing who they will and will not host.
unidentified
Okay.
alex berenson
They've now gotten so aggressive that they, you know, they took the president off or, you know, the former president off.
And, you know, they took me off.
Did I say...
I mean, first it had to be you had to kind of make active threats to get taken off.
Then it would be, you know, broad incitements against, you know, for lawbreaking to get taken off.
I got taken off for being right about the vaccines.
I mean, that's why I got taken off, essentially, and for asking questions that people didn't want asked.
joe rogan
Trevor Burrus You were also promoting vaccine hesitancy by your unsightly truths.
alex berenson
Yes.
Although I never told people, and I've actually been on Tucker, and I think I was on with you back in December, didn't say people shouldn't get vaccinated if they're older, certainly.
joe rogan
Right.
alex berenson
You know, I think it's a risk-benefit analysis.
It's a spectrum, as with anything.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
And I think for older people, it's actually clearly more beneficial to get vaccinated.
alex berenson
I mean, at this point, I'm not as positive about that as I used to be.
But because, again, because there's this duration issue.
unidentified
Right.
alex berenson
But, whatever.
Okay?
I did not.
So, back in the day, you had to, you know, first you had to threaten people, then maybe we'll take off some racists, then we'll take off some people who are inciting law breaking.
Now, whatever.
We'll take off whoever the hell we want.
joe rogan
We'll take off a guy who used to write for the New York Times, who's actually quoting real studies and real data that's coming out of all parts of the world.
alex berenson
That's right.
That's right.
Why?
Because we can.
And good luck suing us.
Okay.
joe rogan
Did they tell you anything?
unidentified
No.
joe rogan
You just get these notices?
Like, how does it go?
alex berenson
So, okay, well...
joe rogan
I'm a good boy.
I've never even been suspended from Twitter.
alex berenson
Oh, you're doing something wrong, Joe.
joe rogan
I just don't type on it.
alex berenson
You're not pushing enough.
joe rogan
I retweet things.
unidentified
That's it.
alex berenson
You didn't retweet me enough before I got suspended.
joe rogan
You should ask.
alex berenson
I retweeted you a little bit.
I gotta put Pandemia over my face.
joe rogan
I retweeted you a little bit.
alex berenson
Didn't I? A couple of times.
joe rogan
How many times do you want me to?
alex berenson
You know, sell some books.
Sell some books.
unidentified
Okay.
joe rogan
You've got to realize, man, I can't just retweet one person.
There's a lot of people out there.
alex berenson
Yeah, four million of them follow you or whatever.
Five million now?
joe rogan
I think it's more than that.
alex berenson
Really?
Anyway, so, okay, so Twitter has policies, okay?
unidentified
Right.
alex berenson
And they've changed the policies repeatedly in the last 18 months.
Now, I actually- Arbitrarily.
Well, yes, but it's their service, okay?
joe rogan
Yes.
alex berenson
They can change the policies.
joe rogan
Right.
alex berenson
There are several questions of fact around me, and again, I have to be careful here.
One would be whether or not they followed their own stated policies around me.
Okay?
Another would be if they made assurances to me, executives at Twitter, or an executive at Twitter, made assurances to me based on conversations via email that we had.
And I will tell you, we had conversations via email.
Okay?
It's in the book.
joe rogan
With editors?
I mean, with executives?
alex berenson
With an executive at Twitter, where I explained exactly what I was going to say, and I was explicitly told, go ahead.
joe rogan
Okay.
So who is making the decision?
Do we have any idea who's making the decision to hit the band hammer on you?
alex berenson
So here's what else I can tell you.
I mean, this is sort of, it's public.
You know, there was a lot of controversy around what I was saying.
And it increased when I started to criticize the vaccines.
And my account became, you know, more and more viewed over the summer.
But for several months, okay, for several months, anyone at Twitter, and, you know, they're going to pay attention to accounts that get 10 million impressions a day or 5 million impressions a day.
Anyone at Twitter...
Would have known what I was saying, saying it on their service.
And Twitter took no action against me.
No action.
They did sometimes label, they labeled some tweets as misleading, which in my opinion, and maybe if we get to a court, we'll see, those tweets were not misleading.
But Twitter took no action against me for those tweets.
Okay?
On June 15th, 2021, the Press Secretary of the United States and the Surgeon General of the United States Called on social media services to begin enforcing rules about misinformation, including Facebook and Twitter.
So they mentioned platforms, not just one.
Facebook is the main platform and Twitter is the second main platform.
On July 16th, 2021, the President of the United States was asked a question about Facebook and vaccines, and he said they're killing people.
I think it was actually Facebook and other platforms, and he said they're killing people.
And the same day, Jen Psaki, the Press Secretary of the United States, again repeated that platforms needed to take enforcement action.
July 16, 2021 is the first time Twitter suspended me.
unidentified
Okay?
alex berenson
So, we'll see if a court wants to decide whether the U.S. government put undue pressure on Twitter and whether Twitter was acting as a state actor.
Okay?
Which would mean they're subject to the First Amendment.
Whether or not 230 applies.
joe rogan
Would you have to have direct correspondence between Twitter and the State Department in order to make that claim?
alex berenson
Well, I can claim whatever I want.
To prove it is different.
But discovery is an avenue where you find out what the other side knows and doesn't know.
And it's also possible, you know, because some of this stuff is government, I can try to FOIA it.
I can file Freedom of Information Act requests to try to find out what they know and don't know.
joe rogan
Okay.
alex berenson
So those are all avenues.
Beyond that, there are legal doctrines.
And again, because the companies have gotten so fat and happy with 230, and they've gotten so protected from it, and they've become more and more aggressive about deplatforming people.
There's now lawyers who are concerned about this, and they are looking at various legal doctrines, precedents that would raise the question of whether or not 230 is being misapplied and over-applied.
And you actually saw some of this last week.
Former President Trump filed a request for a preliminary injunction against Twitter so he could get back on the service.
And he raised the question of some precedence from cases that are decades old.
joe rogan
When did he do this?
alex berenson
He did it Friday.
joe rogan
Really?
I wasn't aware of that.
alex berenson
Yes.
He wants to get back on the service.
And so, you know, he has some claims.
I frankly think that my claims are stronger than his because of some of the specifics of the timing and the specifics of my communications with Twitter.
We will see.
These cases, they're complicated.
And if I'm going to bring one, I want to bring it in a way that is likely to win.
joe rogan
Now, if he has a case and his case gets out there first and by some miracle they wind up reinstating him on Twitter, then your case becomes stronger.
alex berenson
Yes, much stronger, I would think so.
joe rogan
But is there any possibility that they're going to let him back on Twitter?
alex berenson
Well, they won't let him back on unless a court forces them to.
So a preliminary injunction is a requirement.
So it doesn't matter what Twitter wants in that case.
Now, Twitter's going to say, we're a private company.
We can choose to have whoever we want on.
We have our own rules.
And it's a violation of our First Amendment rights to force us to put anyone on, including the former president.
joe rogan
God, what a mess.
alex berenson
It's a mess.
And it's a mess because the companies have grown too powerful and they are exercising censorship much too aggressively.
And frankly, the left isn't satisfied.
This is beyond the fact.
Who is the left like even more than big pharma right now?
Big tech!
joe rogan
Well, the reason why is because they are silencing their enemies, right?
The enemy of my enemy is also my friend.
alex berenson
Until it's not, right?
joe rogan
Right, until it's not.
It's a very short-sighted approach because it's extremely dangerous to just start censoring people for many reasons, but one of the big ones is that you deny the value of discourse.
Deny the value of debate and of good speech winning out over bad speech.
When you have people that are saying things that are wrong or that you disagree with, the greatest power is someone to come along who is more intellectual, more articulate, more convincing, that has an argument that's grounded in facts.
And it's not going to convince everybody.
But you're going to convince enough people that it's going to be valuable to have that debate, and then overall, our body of knowledge and our understanding of this, whatever issue they're debating and discussing, it becomes enhanced.
When you silence people that disagree with something or people that have opposing views, then you just live in an echo chamber.
And you also, you're going to galvanize all the people that are on the opposing side, because now they're going to realize that not only can they not discuss it, but they've been completely silenced, and their perspective is never heard from again, so then they just try to find other places to go to.
alex berenson
Well, and it breeds conspiracy theories.
And it breeds, you know, when people are only talking to each other, they're going to naturally sort of pursue the wildest possible avenues.
joe rogan
At least with the news, there's Fox, right?
So you can get an opposing viewpoint.
There's no opposing viewpoint that is of a commensurate level.
alex berenson
There's nothing close.
joe rogan
Not even close.
alex berenson
People say, oh, you should go on Parler or Gab or Getter, right?
And the thing is, first of all, I don't want to just be talking to the people who are agreeing with me.
And second of all, There's nothing.
Twitter is by far the most important of these platforms.
And they, listen, they've caused me real economic harm because, you know, I was able, even though it's free, right?
And as we talked about with Substack, you can get almost all my content, basically all of it, for free.
When I would tell people on Twitter, hey, you should sign up for my Substack, they did!
So that was my, with no other form of advertising, I was able to drive people to my substack.
And frankly, this book is going to come out in a month and a half, and I would love to be able to talk about it on Twitter.
It would be valuable for me.
So they have hurt me economically.
They have defamed me.
When they say, my reputation, I mean, listen, people can watch this and think that, like, I made a mistake here, I made a mistake there.
I don't think anybody who watches this can't say that I'm serious about what I'm talking about.
Right?
That is my, as a reporter, it's important to me.
And as a reporter who's trying to sell books or whatever, it's important to my brand.
And Twitter defames me when they say that I'm putting out misleading information, when that's the last thing I want to do.
If you want to say, Alex doesn't care, he knows that old people are dying, and he's just a bad guy, and he doesn't care.
Okay, make that argument.
But don't tell me that I'm saying things that are not true or inaccurate.
Because I do whatever I can to be accurate.
joe rogan
Now, you said you were in conversation with this executive.
alex berenson
Yes.
joe rogan
And you told them what you were going to do.
Did you ever contact them after you were banned?
alex berenson
So the executive who I was in contact with is a guy who was the head of global communications.
He actually left in June of 2020. So he left right before you started getting suspended.
Yeah, and I don't know what internal politics, if any.
I mean, he could have left for a hundred reasons.
joe rogan
There was an article that was written in The Atlantic about you, the pandemic's wrongest man.
I didn't read it, but did they get anything wrong?
alex berenson
Did they get anything wrong?
I mean, to me, the whole article was broadly wrong, but I actually address it in the book.
So, look, when I worked for the New York Times, before that, when I was a reporter, quote-unquote, real reporter, you know, for major news organizations, If you're going to write about somebody, you have an obligation to run all your important questions by them.
And not just once.
And the harder the article is going to be, the more obligation you have.
Now, if they don't want to talk to you, they want to lawyer up, they want to tell you you're an asshole, whatever, okay.
But you, as the reporter...
The harder you're going to hit them, the more responsibility you have to make sure they know what your questions are and to give them a chance to answer factually.
And then you should consider those answers, okay?
Not just try to poke holes in them.
You should consider them.
That's what journalism used to be, Joe.
What has happened in the last, one of the many terrible things that's happened in the last five years is it's a gotcha game, but it isn't even really a gotcha game.
It's like this guy sent me one round of questions, and I knew immediately upon reading them, and I also knew it was The Atlantic, which I'd been writing about on Twitter as being totally wrong for months and months.
I knew immediately that he was out to get me.
Nonetheless, I answered those questions in full.
And if he'd had more questions for me, I would have answered those too.
He took my answers.
He looked for other – he looked for sort of like the friendly epidemiologists or whatever to try to poke holes in them.
Where he had to – he sort of like – he twisted stuff that I had said.
And then he wrote what he wrote.
And he didn't come back to me and say, hey, you said this, and I talked to three epidemiologists who said this.
What's your response?
You said this, and when I look at this data source, it says this.
What's your response?
joe rogan
So it was a hit piece in that.
alex berenson
Oh, it was a hit piece.
But that's okay.
You can come to a piece with a point of view.
And here's the other thing.
Back then, now my worries are about the duration of protection as much as anything else.
But back then, I had two main concerns about the vaccines, which I expressed very clearly in a booklet, in a 14,000-word booklet that came out a few days before that piece ran.
They were that the side effect profile looked much worse than other vaccines.
And that the companies had not enrolled the right people in the clinical trial, so we didn't really know how protective the vaccines were.
All right?
You read that piece.
Well, don't read it, but you read it if you like.
You tell me that it is a fair assessment of those two problems.
The problem isn't that he wanted to hit me.
It's that he didn't want to write any—he didn't want to actually address my real concerns.
So, you know, it is what it is.
The nice thing about the book is, like, the book will stand.
My Twitter account...
One of the terrible things about what Twitter did to me is my account is gone.
I mean, I have it.
I have the archive and I'm going to put it up at some point.
I'm hoping to do it soon because I want people to be able to read everything that I wrote.
How did you archive it?
In the weeks leading up to the...
You can ask Twitter.
You should actually do this.
You can ask Twitter to send you an archive.
They'll do it for anybody.
And people said to me...
If you don't do this before they ban you, because it seemed pretty clear they were going to try to ban me at some point by August, you're going to have a hard time doing this after you ban you.
So ask for your archive.
So I did.
So I have all my tweets.
But no one else can see them.
joe rogan
Has anyone been reinstated on Twitter?
alex berenson
I don't know.
That's a good question.
I don't think anybody well-known has.
joe rogan
I haven't heard of anybody.
alex berenson
By the way, you asked me this before.
So it's supposed to be a five-strike policy.
That's what they instituted in March.
And they're supposed to tell you, they say, we'll tell you after each strike what you got in trouble for.
So they never told me I had a first strike.
And again, back sort of March through July, pre-Biden, I seemed to be able to post essentially freely without censorship.
And even when they would put a misleading tag on, they didn't notify me.
Then they told me what my second strike was.
The third strike, they sent me an email, but they didn't say what it was.
The fourth strike is to me, I mean, they're all egregious, but the fourth strike was so egregious.
The fourth strike, I reported this.
I said, Pfizer has updated the results of its clinical trial from the big one, the one that got the vaccine approved.
It shows that there were 15 deaths in the placebo arm.
I'm sorry, 15 deaths in the vaccine arm, 14 deaths in the placebo arm.
There's no benefit.
On this basis to taking the vaccine.
It doesn't reduce deaths.
And this is all the data we're ever going to have about this because they blew up their clinical trial, which they did.
They gave the vaccine to everybody in the placebo arm.
That means you don't have two arms to compare.
You just have everybody getting the vaccine.
unidentified
Right.
joe rogan
They've killed the control.
alex berenson
Correct.
They killed the control.
So Twitter said that was misleading.
How could it possibly be misleading?
It was a completely accurate description of the clinical trial results that Pfizer posted about its own trial.
Okay.
That was my fourth strike.
Fourth strike is a week.
Fourth strike is the last one before you get banned.
And then a month later, they banned me.
They never notified me.
I still don't...
I mean, I think I know which tweet it was because it must have been the last tweet that they put a misleading tag on.
joe rogan
What was that one?
alex berenson
That one was...
I'll read it to you.
joe rogan
Okay.
But again, they don't tell you what was wrong with it?
They just said it's misleading?
alex berenson
No!
Right, they didn't tell me anything.
They put this tag on it.
They don't give me a chance to cure it.
They don't say why it's misleading.
The tweet was...
joe rogan
That's the universal sound when someone's looking for something.
alex berenson
So sad.
Zero following.
Zero followers.
And my final tweet.
joe rogan
Drum roll, please.
alex berenson
It doesn't stop infection or transmission.
Don't think of it as a vaccine.
Think of it at best as a therapeutic with a limited window of efficacy and terrible side effect profile that must be diagnosed in advance of illness.
And we want to mandate it in sanity.
And there it is.
joe rogan
This tweet is misleading.
Learn why health officials recommend a vaccine for most people.
We're in a movie.
unidentified
We are in They Live.
joe rogan
This tweet is misleading.
Learn why health officials recommend a vaccine for most people.
alex berenson
Yeah.
By the way, it doesn't stop infection or transmission.
Can we all agree on that?
joe rogan
Well, it's clear now.
We know that now.
We know that now.
And now they're saying it stops death.
I mean, there's a video of Fauci talking to this influencer on Instagram.
It's kind of a hilarious video.
Because she's talking about, like, hot vaxxed.
alex berenson
Oh, yes!
joe rogan
Yeah, and he's saying, yes, you can do it because you won't catch it and you won't transmit it to your friends.
alex berenson
Yeah.
joe rogan
And when he says that, that's not true.
alex berenson
No, well, I mean, here's the thing.
Right?
I don't know it's not true.
joe rogan
Now we know that's not true.
alex berenson
Now, here's my book's got, you know, 65 pages of notes, but Fauci said...
joe rogan
At the time, that's what he did think, though.
alex berenson
It seems to be what he thought.
This is in May, okay?
In May, he said...
With good vaccination programs, countries can essentially eliminate the presence of a particular pathogen.
That's called elimination.
And the other is control.
You have a very, very low level in the community, enough to know you haven't completely eliminated it.
So he was actually saying, he was saying, control means you get to a very, very low level.
There's also this thing called elimination.
And then he said, with SARS-CoV-2 and with COVID-19, I would hope it would be much closer to elimination than just control.
That was in May.
So when these people tell you that they didn't say the vaccines could end the epidemic, they are lying.
They were just wrong.
joe rogan
Now, when they initially released the vaccines, what kind of a window of efficacy did they envision?
Did they have data that showed a wane after a certain amount of time?
alex berenson
No.
So there's a paper that came out, I think it was in April 2021. It's a good paper and it has this chart and it shows...
So the one thing you can't ever do is speed up time, right?
So they were guessing.
They were guessing at how long the protective effect would last.
And there's something called the immune correlative protection.
What they were essentially trying to guess was two different things.
One was what level of antibodies...
Correlated to vaccine protection.
So in other words, if your antibodies got to, I'm just going to make up a number, 1,000 units per milliliter of blood, how protected were you compared to if your antibodies only got to 10 units per milliliter of blood?
And we knew some vaccines are better at getting your antibodies to go really high than others.
Okay.
And the best ones were the mRNA ones.
Okay.
So they were guessing...
On how quickly that would decline and at what point would you be vulnerable again, okay?
But they also had to guess where you're going to get this B and T cell immunity, this long-term immunity, and they didn't know that either.
Long story short, there's a paper that became sort of the seminal paper on this, and it suggested that at 95% initial immunity, You would have really good protection for at least nine months.
You'd still be, I think, in the 80% plus range after nine months.
And then, assuming that there was some argument among virologists and stuff, does it flatten out there?
Does it continue to decline?
But that would suggest that you probably were going to have pretty good immunity for at least 18 months.
And when you heard the companies talk, they were initially talking about an annual booster.
And maybe that was a little bit conservative.
I think...
I think that there's no way to look at this other than it was just a stunning failure.
Again, three things have happened.
One is the antibodies go down faster than was predicted.
Two is that the virus has mutated in a way against, again, it's mutated against the antibodies.
And three is that the vaccines don't produce the same B and T cell immunity that natural infection and recovery does.
But So this may have come as a surprise.
Again, I don't think Fauci wanted to be this wrong.
I don't think you...
I mean, why would you say in May, no, we can eliminate this.
Eliminate!
Not control.
Eliminate.
Why would you say in May we could eliminate this?
And three months later, three months, you're telling people they have to get boosters.
You said it because you made a mistake.
The question that I think we should all ask is, did the companies know more?
Were the companies looking at their data internally in January and February and March from the clinical trials, unpublished data, and maybe saying, you know what, we're seeing that the antibodies go away more quickly than we thought.
And we're seeing some rate of breakthrough infections in these people.
Or were the companies sort of eating their own cooking and they didn't know either?
And if we had real investigative reporters in the United States, This would be a great question.
Just like the question about why Pfizer, why last year people were saying, oh, you know what?
This is going to be for the good of humanity.
No one's going to make any money off these.
And this year, it turns out these are the most profitable pharmaceutical products ever invented.
Okay?
Nothing in history has made money for the companies like these.
Why that happened?
Maybe we'd ask questions about VAERS and how well it's working.
Maybe we'd ask some questions about the relationships between the regulatory agencies and the vaccine makers.
We don't do any of that.
joe rogan
What happened?
Why did we lose all of our – not all of them.
Matt Taibbi is still out there.
Glenn Greenwald is still out there.
There are independent investigative journalists that still do real good work, but it's not nearly as common.
alex berenson
Why?
Because you can investigate Donald Trump's ties to Russia and do real work on that.
But God forbid you investigate, you know, Hunter Biden's ties to China.
Unfortunately, investigative reporting has gotten politically polarized in a way it shouldn't be.
And there aren't that many people who do this sort of complex pharma reporting.
There's some.
And those people have stayed away from this.
They have just...
joe rogan
Because it's so dangerous.
It's such a third rail.
alex berenson
Yes.
I mean, you know...
I can't go back.
I can't go.
I mean, if I tried to work for the New York Times again, I mean, I can't even get an op-ed, you know, one a year.
That would never happen now.
And I'm very fortunate.
You know, I have this loyal audience and I have 150,000 people who are signed up for Substack and a fraction of those people are subscribing enough that I don't really have to worry about money right now.
I mean, you know, so that's a good thing.
But I'm lucky.
joe rogan
But you're a sort of persona non grata in these mainstream publications now, like the Washington Post or the New York Times or the Los Angeles Times.
alex berenson
Yeah, they go out of their way to attend.
Now, it's funny.
Here's a funny thing.
There's a few people at those places who I can still talk to, but they're not willing to write anything defending me.
But we can still have backchannel conversations.
But somebody emailed me, a former reporter actually emailed me a few weeks ago and said, do you have a lot of people in the business who are talking to you, telling you, I think you're right?
And I told them the truth.
The answer is no.
I don't have a lot of hidden—or if I do, it's so well hidden that no one's coming and telling me.
Here's my hidden support, Joe.
My hidden support's in the scientific and medical communities.
I get so many emails with tips and stuff.
You know, if I write—if I put up on my Substack about a paper that came out or something, it's quite likely that somebody tipped me to that.
And those people, the scientists and the doctors, there's a lot of them who have a lot of very serious questions about it.
But they're afraid to ask them publicly!
joe rogan
They are afraid.
They're afraid to discuss it.
And that's where it gets really crazy is people who it's their field of expertise and they don't want to discuss it.
And I think the only thing that would turn this around is if the attitude of the social media sites changed and they encouraged open discourse on that.
It would have to be some monumental change in the narrative.
Some shift where we realize, oh, okay, this is what's going on.
This is clear.
There's no reason to deny this any longer.
And, you know, I think it would take some very courageous people to step in and try to adjust that because the narrative has shifted.
So, I mean, I can't tell you how many times I've read a tweet about someone dying.
And then some people will jump in and say the vaccines are safe and effective.
And then I look at that post, and it's not even a real human.
unidentified
Right.
joe rogan
You go to their thing, and it's all just them retweeting things that follow some sort of a Democrat narrative.
And you go, oh, this is probably someone in Russia, in a Russian troll farm.
Did you see that there's a Facebook thing recently?
They found out that 19 out of 20 of the top Christian sites on Facebook were run by a Russian troll farm.
unidentified
No.
alex berenson
I did not see that.
joe rogan
Or Macedonia, I think it was.
Yeah, some Eastern European troll farm.
Yeah, I mean, this is a giant part of the problem, is that these people in these, whatever these troll farms are, they want us to be at each other's throats.
And it's very effective.
And it's happening.
It's happening constantly.
And then other people just sort of dive into it, because they think it's ideologically significant...
alex berenson
But don't you think it's more organic than that?
Don't you think it's just that these people are scared?
joe rogan
It's that, too.
That's what I'm saying.
It's all the above.
It's accentuated, and it's natural.
It's organic, and it's influenced.
alex berenson
Somebody was saying to me, if you live in Texas, or you live in a rural part of a blue state, you've probably been living your life pretty normally for the last 12 months plus.
joe rogan
A red state.
alex berenson
A red state, or a red part of a blue state, right?
But the people who didn't live their lives normally, the Mali Jong fast of the world, these people who stayed in their apartments and...
unidentified
Triple masked while they're watching TV. They haven't figured out how to stop being afraid.
alex berenson
And they're just getting angrier and angrier.
joe rogan
And they seem to be addicted to the fear porn.
When we came here, we came here in May of last year.
That's when I first started thinking that LA was falling apart.
I was like, I just, I didn't buy, you know, it was two weeks to flatten the curve.
And then all of a sudden I was like, oh, they're not going to let this go.
And then they wouldn't allow anything to open.
They were closing down restaurants.
I was I was having people in, friends of mine that owned restaurants.
I was like, this is devastating.
And they were telling me that 70% of these places are going under.
And they can't stay open.
It doesn't make sense.
None of this makes any sense.
This is so crazy.
And then they shut down outdoor dining.
My friend has a brother who works for the state and was in the room when they were making these decisions and he said there's no data to support.
But listen, he said this to the woman who made the decision.
There's no data to support transmission in outdoor dining.
She said it's all about optics.
That was the answer.
The answer was it's all about optics, which is a fucking insanely calloused answer to someone when you're saying something that's going to shut down people's business, kill their livelihood.
The number of people that had their lives devastated by that one decision.
By a woman, by the way, the same woman in Los Angeles went to eat at a restaurant the day she shut it down.
alex berenson
Well, that's the question that, you know, and you saw this with the San Francisco mayor who, you know, she got caught, or London Breed got caught not wearing a mask and then made this comment about the fun police.
joe rogan
Yeah.
alex berenson
And so you do, that kind of makes you wonder, are they as scared as they're pretending to be and as scared as they want to make everyone else be?
It's theater.
It's theater, but, you know, look at Australia.
We haven't talked about Australia.
joe rogan
Right, right.
We haven't.
alex berenson
I mean, Australia's becoming a police state.
It's insane.
A genuine police state.
joe rogan
And I don't think there's a way out of that for them.
I'm really, really, really concerned about Australia because the deaths there are so low.
The cases are...
They're not experiencing some hellscape of infections and hospital overruns.
That's not what's happening.
alex berenson
No, it's not what's happening.
And they're still this terrified.
And, you know, I mean...
There's this weird law that enables the government to take over people's internet accounts.
I wouldn't have believed this, but it's a real thing.
They have these riot police shooting rubber bullets at people.
Australia.
It's a cool place.
A democratic society.
joe rogan
But no guns.
alex berenson
Yeah, you know, I stayed away from saying that on Twitter.
joe rogan
You should say it.
alex berenson
Well, I can't say it!
joe rogan
I mean, it really is what it is.
You can't do that to people when everyone's armed.
You can't do that.
When no one's armed, you can do that.
And I hate saying that because I don't want to say it like that these people are jackbooted thugs that are taking advantage of the situation to control people.
I'm not saying that.
But what I'm saying is it is human nature.
To change the way your perceptions of someone, if you're in a position where whether you've been bestowed this power by the state or by whatever the fuck it is, a higher power, if you think you have control and power over other people, then you exercise it.
It is a natural thing.
The Stanford prison experiments show it.
It's a natural thing that people do when they have power over other people.
They exert that power.
alex berenson
I mean, the language of these state premieres in Australia is not that different than Olbermann.
joe rogan
No.
It's very weird that they're- Well, not only that, it's anti-science.
Have you seen the woman who's their head, the medical lady, who said that vaccines are better than natural infection and that you just have to get used to getting vaccines and boosters and constant vaccines?
There's no science behind what she's saying.
unidentified
No!
alex berenson
Are we going to count deaths from this?
Are we ever going to have another season?
We count flu deaths every year.
We count other deaths on an annual basis.
COVID deaths like...
It's just like the meter never stops.
It never resets.
joe rogan
Even people, I mean, I had a conversation with my friend Rhonda Patrick, who's a vaccine.
I mean, she believes in the vaccine.
She's a scientist and she's a brilliant woman.
When we told her that 95% of the people who died from COVID had an average of four comorbidities, she didn't believe it.
We had to show her.
And you see people go, what?
95%?
Like 95% have something that's killing them.
alex berenson
Yeah.
joe rogan
Whether it's diabetes or cancer, heart disease or obesity, or, you know, there's a whole host of these comorbidities, but four, and at 95, so the vast amount of people who died from COVID, 95% of them had four other things that were killing them.
alex berenson
I mean...
You can give people these, like, in Canada, okay, Canada, not the- Another place, losing their fucking minds.
Losing their minds.
The average age of death, or the median age of a COVID patient, is 85%.
Okay?
In Denmark, which is 6 million people, 26 people since this whole thing started under the age of 50 have died.
26 out of 6 million.
joe rogan
But they have a different approach.
alex berenson
No, they're just healthier than we are.
joe rogan
Right, but I mean, the way they're treating it than Canada.
Like, we can't conflate the two.
alex berenson
All I'm saying is when you actually understand who's getting sick and dying from this, it doesn't make a bit of sense.
joe rogan
Well, what it gets to me is when I have these conversations with people, when they start talking about it like it's a boogeyman, when it's going to get you, and then I tell them, I've had it!
I just got it.
I had it last month.
alex berenson
Right.
Half the country's had it.
joe rogan
But I mean, when you're saying it to me, and you haven't had it, and I've had it, we're in a weird place, man.
alex berenson
That's right.
joe rogan
Like, you're telling me about something as if I didn't catch it.
alex berenson
That's right.
joe rogan
Like, I got it.
alex berenson
That's right.
So then they have to talk about, well, you know, it could mutate.
Yes, it could mutate.
joe rogan
It could mutate.
alex berenson
It did mutate.
joe rogan
I got the Delta.
And also, I'm 54. I'm not young.
alex berenson
No, but you're obviously healthy.
You take care of yourself.
joe rogan
I've been doing that my whole life, and that should count.
That should count.
When you're pretending that you can lump me into a fat guy with diabetes in the same category, that's crazy.
But people want to do that.
They want to pretend that these 95% with four comorbidities are exactly the same as you, and you should be scared and stay in your house.
When I'm like, I'm not scared, people get so fucking angry.
alex berenson
It's weird.
And the people who are, again, I talk about this in the book, it's crazy.
The people who are the angriest are the people who for 15, not 15, for 30 years have been saying, you know what, you use drugs, it can cause consequences, we will help you.
You drink too much, we will help you.
You don't take care of your body, you eat too much, we will help you.
But if you choose not to get vaccinated, go to hell.
joe rogan
Well, the narrative is that you are not contributing to the greater good of the community.
The greater good of the community means you get vaccinated.
But my perception is the greater good of the community is you take care of yourself, be healthy, and don't be a strain on the healthcare system.
alex berenson
Let's go all the way back to the data from the UK. Vaccinated people are being infected just as frequently, which means that they are most likely transmitting this just as frequently.
joe rogan
That's another narrative that's shifted, too, because initially they were saying that if you are vaccinated and you have a so-called breakthrough case, which is Very, very rare, which is not rare at all.
But when they were saying it was very, very rare, they were saying that you're carrying less of the virus.
alex berenson
Not true.
joe rogan
That's not true.
unidentified
Not true.
alex berenson
In fact, there's some evidence, actually, that those people are carrying more of the virus.
Why is that?
Because it may be that the vaccine confers partial protection on some people.
So you get it.
It's not enough to keep you from having very high viral loads, but it is enough for some people from getting very sick with those viral loads.
So they're just out and about in the community.
And they also, I'm vaccinated.
I probably just have a cold.
I don't have COVID. This was more likely a couple months ago.
joe rogan
When people didn't know.
alex berenson
That's right.
But they were out there transmitting very high levels of viral load to people.
joe rogan
Yeah.
Wouldn't that be the same with people that have also had a natural infection and then had a second case?
alex berenson
It just doesn't happen.
joe rogan
Second cases?
I have a friend who's gotten sick twice.
alex berenson
I shouldn't say it doesn't happen.
It's very, very rare.
Natural infection is very protective.
joe rogan
My friend Curtis, one of his relatives, got it three times.
alex berenson
And he confirmed PCR infection?
joe rogan
Three times.
By the way, they are super unhealthy.
Super hillbillies.
He said they drink Mountain Dew and eat Cheetos all day.
He goes, I can't fucking believe they're still alive.
alex berenson
That's great.
Dude, we want to go back and look at that Humetrix thing, just look at this one thing, or no?
joe rogan
Sure, sure, sure.
alex berenson
I mean, look, unfortunately or fortunately, I know we're three hours in.
joe rogan
That's okay.
alex berenson
There's so much more to talk about.
joe rogan
Listen, man, this is what this podcast is all about.
I mean, the reason why I want to have you on, first of all, I enjoyed having you on in the past.
I think you are grossly misrepresented and because you are a courageous person who's willing to buck the trend of being a propagandist for this system, the way that's running, you know, this narrative that you can't vary from no matter what and you shift The narrative shifts according to what's happening.
So it pretends that, oh, we always knew that you could still get sick.
That is not true.
alex berenson
Not true!
joe rogan
Not true.
That is not what was said before.
alex berenson
And yes.
I mean, so one thing I talk about in the book...
joe rogan
Go ahead, Jim.
We sort of put it up there.
What was that?
Okay.
This is the AI-powered DOD analysis program named Project Soluce Shatters Official Vaccine Narrative Shows.
alex berenson
Okay.
joe rogan
Antibody-dependent enhancement accelerating in the fully vaccinated with each passing week.
unidentified
Okay.
alex berenson
What is this website?
Hold on.
joe rogan
This is yournews.com.
alex berenson
Yeah, this is a problem.
So here's the problem.
jamie vernon
That's a real thing, though.
alex berenson
When you delete me, when you ban me, you get stuff like this.
This is not correct.
joe rogan
Pause for a second.
What do you mean it's a real thing?
unidentified
What do you mean?
jamie vernon
Well, this is how I first found it, because you said you found it on some GeoCity site, so I went to try to find it that way.
So I was like, all right, well, let me Google Project Salus and see what pops up that way.
That's what I meant to a real thing.
Like, Project Salus is a real thing.
alex berenson
Yes, Project Salus is a real thing.
joe rogan
Can you go to fucking DuckDuckGo and stop using Google and see if you can find a real...
alex berenson
Just type in Humetric Salus.
jamie vernon
Well, so that was in there, too.
I mean, I was just trying to decipher what...
unidentified
Because that's how wild things start that way.
alex berenson
Humetrix is the, yeah, that's the, okay.
So, yeah, waning effect of COVID-19 vaccine.
Okay.
joe rogan
Okay.
alex berenson
Okay, so this is the real thing.
joe rogan
Okay.
jamie vernon
That's the same thing.
alex berenson
Okay.
joe rogan
Excuse me?
jamie vernon
This was in that same article.
alex berenson
Yes, it's in the article.
joe rogan
But it's not in the yournews.com.
jamie vernon
It's right here.
alex berenson
But the thing is the yournews people lied about what this says.
joe rogan
Okay.
alex berenson
It doesn't say that there's ADE. ADE would be terrible, okay?
It says the vaccines are failing, which is a different thing, right?
Failing means they're going back to zero.
So if you go through, okay, this is the key, and I can...
So what they're saying right now is that the vaccine is 41% protective against infection and 62% effective against hospitalization.
joe rogan
At what?
At how many months out?
alex berenson
That's about...
I believe that's five to six months out.
joe rogan
Oh, so that's better than I thought.
alex berenson
Yeah.
joe rogan
No, I thought they were saying that like six months, it's like that's when you should consider getting a booster, right?
alex berenson
Well, yes.
joe rogan
Eight months they're saying a booster.
alex berenson
If you go on, go through this.
Keep going, keep going, keep going.
But that's nothing like 90 or 95 percent.
Okay, they say 3 percent—oh, go back one slide—3 percent breakthrough rate, meaning you have a 3 in 100 percent chance already of being infected if you're vaccinated.
Pfizer said that over a one-year period they believed it was 7 percent.
joe rogan
So, but 3% at what time?
alex berenson
Over the first six months, basically.
joe rogan
Okay, so during the time where the vaccine is at its highest efficacy, there's a 2.9% cumulative breakthrough rate.
alex berenson
That's right, but you have to...
joe rogan
Pretty good.
alex berenson
No, no, not pretty good.
joe rogan
No?
alex berenson
Because think about, if you're unvaccinated, what's your risk of getting COVID is in the United States over a six-month period?
It's certainly no more than 10%.
It might be closer to, you know, it's probably in the 10% range.
joe rogan
We'll find that out in a moment.
We'll Google that in a moment.
So, 21% hospitalization rate in breakthrough infections.
alex berenson
Yes.
So, okay, 21% hospitalization rate.
Again, that doesn't say that you're not going to be hospitalized if you're breakthrough.
Okay.
joe rogan
Okay.
alex berenson
So, go to the next slide.
joe rogan
So do they know from January to today, which is a 10-month period, do they know what the efficacy is?
The average efficacy of the vaccine from that 10-month time period?
Because then it wanes even further, right?
alex berenson
Well, we don't know.
We don't know if after six months it continues to go towards zero.
My strong suspicion is it goes to zero, but I'm not sure we know.
So go on, go on.
This is sort of the most important thing.
So this is as of late August is the most recent data they had.
So this is still a month plus out.
The dark red line is the number or the percentage of people, number per 100,000, so on the left, of people who are getting sick It's
like almost 400 per 100,000 versus 200 per 100,000.
So that's in a week, though.
That's over the course of a week.
So you have about a one in 250 chance of getting infected six months after your vaccination.
And that's in people 65 and older.
If you go to the next slide...
joe rogan
And then this is the question is you have to...
Go back to that, please.
alex berenson
Oh, sorry.
joe rogan
You have to think this is how many people have gotten infected based on what it would be like if you were vaccinated five to six months versus what would it be like three to four months.
But what it doesn't show is unvaccinated.
unidentified
Correct.
joe rogan
So the question would be, how close is that red line to unvaccinated?
alex berenson
So they do have, if you go to the next slide, you'll see that they try to provide an answer to that.
unidentified
Okay.
alex berenson
Okay.
So this is, oh, no, sorry, not this one, next one.
Nope, next one.
It's in here.
Nope, this is Pfizer versus Moderna.
Breakthrough.
Keep going.
We'll find it.
Oh, back one.
Okay.
unidentified
Okay.
alex berenson
No.
I know they have this, though.
I know they give this to us.
I mean, what I hope, by the way, you're seeing in all of this...
Oh, here we go.
Okay.
Okay.
So this is a complicated chart.
But what they're trying to do is they're guessing in the broadest sense...
How many people would get infected at various levels of vaccine protection?
So if the vaccine is 100% effective, if it stops every infection, then you will have 0% of people getting sick after vaccination.
joe rogan
And that's the blue line at the very bottom.
alex berenson
Exactly.
It stays flat.
Nobody ever gets infected, whether 100% of people are vaccinated or 80 or whatever.
Now you go to the other case, if vaccine effectiveness is zero, then the percentage of people who get sick exactly matches the percentage of people who are vaccinated.
So if 50% of people are vaccinated, then 50% of the people who get sick are vaccinated.
So they're comparing, and then between zero and 100, you can calculate what the percentage of vaccinated people getting sick will be.
So they tested, they checked that against the fact that they know that 80% of their people in their group, which is basically people over 65, are fully vaccinated.
So if 80% of people were fully vaccinated and the vaccine were 90% effective, you'd still have some cases of people getting sick after vaccination, but it'd be like 20%.
Instead, what you're seeing is that 71% of people who got sick were fully vaccinated and 60% of people, this is in the United States, okay, where we quote unquote have a pandemic of the vaccinated.
Their own data, again, this is from a huge group.
It's more than 5 million people.
I think it's DOD, like, you know, it's like retirees, military retirees.
60% of people in this group who were hospitalized with COVID were vaccinated.
Not 1%, not 2%, 60%.
And what they're saying to you is that that still shows some level of vaccine protection because you would expect if vaccines were totally useless, you'd get to 80% being in the hospital.
Instead, you have 60% in the hospital.
So they're saying, well, the vaccine looks like it still does some good.
But is that what Fauci has told you?
Is that what Walensky has told you?
Is that what Biden has told you?
They didn't tell you that 60% of people in the United States right now are hospitalized.
I'm sorry, are vaccinated.
joe rogan
So essentially, they're not being honest as the data changes.
alex berenson
That's correct.
joe rogan
So the data initially was very promising.
It looked pretty good.
alex berenson
Looked great!
joe rogan
Yeah.
As it did in Israel.
alex berenson
Yes.
joe rogan
But as the data has changed, then they're not being honest.
And then they're shifting the narrative to this is a pandemic of the unvaccinated.
alex berenson
And yet you need a booster.
joe rogan
Yeah.
alex berenson
Why do you need a booster if the vaccine works?
joe rogan
Where does this all go, Alex?
Have you sat down and tried to figure this out?
I mean, you're a guy who's, you've paid the price for your reporting and your honesty on this, and where does this go?
alex berenson
I don't know.
I used to...
joe rogan
There's never been a time where you could report on something honestly that is a public health concern, and because of that, you would be ostracized, you'd be kicked out of the town square, which is what Twitter really is.
I'm sure you probably agree with me that it should be regulated in some way, where it could...
alex berenson
Or it should be completely unregulated.
joe rogan
Well, I mean regulated in some way that you treat it like a utility, where it's a basic human right to be able to express yourself.
I think that's...
I mean, other than doxing people, threatening people, that kind of stuff, I think you should have the right to express yourself.
alex berenson
Yeah?
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
And this is coming from someone who gets insulted on Twitter every day.
I don't want anybody silenced.
I don't read it.
But I feel like you should be able to express yourself.
I feel like it's no different than talking.
At this point, it's a part of being a human being.
The way people talk on Twitter is very similar to the way people talk amongst friends when no one's listening.
There's a weird thing that's happening where we're accepting the idea of silencing people from expressing their self in a way that Is arguably one of the most important methods of expression that's ever existed.
This is one of the most amazing creations.
An accidental creation, by the way.
Is that true?
alex berenson
Yes!
joe rogan
Much like this podcast.
When they started doing that, they had no idea it was going to become what it is.
They thought it was going to be a thing where you're going, at Alex Berenstain is going to the movies.
Right?
alex berenson
Right.
No, it's true.
joe rogan
That's what it used to be used as.
alex berenson
It's true.
joe rogan
At Joe Rogan is going to eat pizza.
That's what they would say.
alex berenson
No, it's become arguably the most important journalistic medium of all.
joe rogan
People used to use it in the third term.
People forgot how it was used.
But that's how it was used.
Some of the early tweets, like it would be, at Jamie Vernon is taking a nap.
Do you remember that?
alex berenson
Is that true?
unidentified
No.
jamie vernon
It was created because there was no group texting back then, and that was the easiest way to tell everyone one thing at once.
joe rogan
Right, but it was used in a way that is not normal.
It's not a normal method of interacting, the third-person method.
alex berenson
I see what you're saying.
You're saying the actual speech on it.
joe rogan
Oh, interesting.
jamie vernon
Hashtag started because people started typing hashtag whatever word, and then they started making them clickable and searchable.
alex berenson
Oh, that's interesting.
jamie vernon
They added that functionality.
joe rogan
Did you know that the hashtag natural immunity has been banned from Instagram?
You cannot use it?
If you use the hashtag naturalimmunity, you'll be redirected to the CDC's website.
alex berenson
Did you know that?
I did not know that.
joe rogan
It's stunning.
jamie vernon
I will show you, but actually, Instagram face, they're all down right now.
They've been down the whole day.
alex berenson
Oh, really?
jamie vernon
Yeah, everyone's freaking out.
joe rogan
I wonder what happened.
jamie vernon
They don't know.
Actually, shit's been deleted, so it could cause an issue.
joe rogan
Russians.
jamie vernon
Maybe.
alex berenson
Maybe the Chinese.
jamie vernon
It's a whole other show.
alex berenson
It's an attack!
It's an attack?
No.
joe rogan
That is another show.
alex berenson
One of the great disappointments to me is that I thought Twitter was better than Facebook.
I thought that Twitter actually had a commitment to free speech, in part because they told me they had a commitment to free speech.
joe rogan
Well, I think Jack does.
I really do believe Jack does.
alex berenson
Do you know him at all?
joe rogan
Yes, I do know him.
I like him a lot.
I really do.
alex berenson
Because I've heard this from someone else.
joe rogan
He's a brilliant guy.
I like him a lot.
I really enjoy communicating with him.
I really enjoy the way he thinks.
I don't know how much his hands are tied, but I know he has advocated for a completely Wild West I bet he is.
He's definitely on the side of free speech.
unidentified
It's his company!
joe rogan
Do you know how big that goddamn monster is?
That fucking machine?
alex berenson
It's true.
joe rogan
It's so big.
And who is pulling the string?
What is it?
The trust and safety?
What is that?
What is that?
alex berenson
No, no.
I don't know what that is.
joe rogan
You know, they have like some...
alex berenson
They now have a thing where you can report things to this.
They encouraged users to report stuff.
I mean, it has – again, as I've been preparing for this potential legal action, I've gone back and sort of looked at how their policies have changed and how they're – and at each step, they've become more controlling.
So for a while, you could say whatever you wanted.
Then it was – you could say that masks don't work, but as long as you don't tell people to violate sort of local laws against masks, okay, like I don't – I'm with you.
I'm basically a free speech absolutist unless it's like, you know, again.
joe rogan
Again, something's going to harm people.
alex berenson
But I get that Twitter doesn't want the service if they feel like they don't want it to be used to encourage people to break the law.
But then they tighten the restrictions again where it was just if you're presenting factual information and saying as a fact masks don't work, which I said many times on their website, you can get in trouble for that.
Now, one of the things, if the lawsuit was forwarded that I would like them to answer is, why was I able to say that for so many months?
But suddenly, when Psaki and Biden and Vivek Murthy told them they needed to do something different, they did it.
joe rogan
So where are you at?
Like, what do you do now?
alex berenson
So I just finished Pandemia, the book.
joe rogan
And it's going to be available when?
alex berenson
It will be available November 30th.
I've got to record the audiobook, but Regnery, which is a conservative publisher because my old publishers, I mean, I'm actually really happy to have Regnery because they've been 100% in my corner in a way that a mainstream publisher might not be at this point.
But, you know, my old publisher, Simon& Schuster, and my previous publisher to that, Random House and Putnam, they would not publish me.
They would not publish this book.
joe rogan
Did they discuss it with you?
alex berenson
Yes.
So there were several.
And, you know, some of these places have conservative imprints.
Those imprints—and this is before the vaccines.
This was just about masks last year.
Yeah.
Those conservative imprints, a couple of them came to me and said, we would like to publish a book.
So, you know, that's great.
You get a couple of publishers.
You get an auction set up.
You really see what the book's going to sell for.
Great.
Days before the auction was going to begin, the mainstream houses all walked away.
I guess one did not walk away, but the mainstream houses walked away, and so Regnery got this book at a pretty good price.
joe rogan
Was there any discussion?
Did they get pressure from someone?
alex berenson
Yes.
The editors told me they had pressure from senior people.
joe rogan
Senior people at the publishing house.
unidentified
Yes.
alex berenson
And I actually went to John Karp, who's the head of Simon& Schuster, who I've known for almost 20 years, who published my very first book.
And he published Tell Your Children.
He published both my nonfiction books before this.
And I said, John...
You've got to let me write this book.
I mean, this is important.
And even if I'm wrong, you have to have other views.
And he said, no, I think it could be dangerous and I'm not going to do it.
joe rogan
Dangerous.
alex berenson
Dangerous is the word.
This is before vaccines.
joe rogan
But people love to say that.
They've been saying that.
Dangerous misinformation.
alex berenson
Dangerous.
Because masks are so...
I mean, how you can say with a straight face masks telling people not to wear masks is dangerous when the whole country's been wearing them for the last 18 months and it's made zero difference to the course of this epidemic.
joe rogan
So you don't think that masks confer any protection?
alex berenson
Not surgical or cloth ones.
They are useless.
joe rogan
Really?
alex berenson
Oh yeah.
joe rogan
Useless?
alex berenson
Useless.
joe rogan
Like they don't keep certain amount of spittle from coming out of your mouth and getting on to other people?
alex berenson
Sure.
And if you're sick and coughing, you should wear a mask if you're outside.
But the virus is not transmitted through particles of that size.
It's transmitted through small particles, much smaller.
joe rogan
So doesn't it block any of the small particles when you're using those masks?
alex berenson
It blocks some.
joe rogan
So better than nothing, though.
alex berenson
Is it really better than nothing?
It's not clear, because people still get infected.
In other words, if the minimum dose of infection is 10,000 viral particles, and I as an infected person am breathing out a million viral particles per breath, and the mask keeps 20% of those particles in, I'm at 800,000 and it still only takes 10,000 to infect you.
So you're going to get sick whether I'm wearing the mask or not.
joe rogan
But if it protects, like maybe there's like a fence, like an edge where it protects or doesn't protect.
alex berenson
There's a theoretical case to be made there?
joe rogan
But if that theoretical case gets distributed over a population of 350 million people...
alex berenson
Yeah, you get a lot of dirty masks thrown in parking lots.
joe rogan
You also get a lot of people that don't get infected that maybe would have.
unidentified
No, no, no.
joe rogan
You don't think so?
alex berenson
No.
Here's what I will tell you with certainty.
And vaccines are no...
Back in March or April or May, if you were New Zealand and you'd kept your population COVID-free, you could say, we won.
How do we win?
We have an effective vaccine.
There will be people in New Zealand who will never get COVID. We win.
Not for a month or a year.
Yeah, we went through that, but we won permanently.
The vaccines don't work, okay?
They certainly don't work to stop infection or transmission.
What that means is that everyone, every human being on this planet is going to be exposed to COVID if they haven't already been.
Whether you wear a mask or not, whether you're locked down or not, New Zealand, Australia, they can't keep it out.
And the only way they're going to keep it, they have even a prayer of keeping it out.
Who knows what the Chinese are doing, okay?
The Chinese are, who knows?
joe rogan
What are they doing?
alex berenson
Well, they claim, you know, they've kind of stopped COVID permanently.
joe rogan
You don't think so?
alex berenson
Do you find the Chinese very trustworthy about this?
joe rogan
Super trustworthy.
alex berenson
Yeah, super, right?
joe rogan
I'm starting to use their phones.
I'm buying my phones straight from China.
alex berenson
So every human being on the planet is going to be exposed.
You can get it early, you can get it now, you can get it in a month.
Doesn't matter if you wear masks.
It's all theater.
The lockdowns are theater, the masks are theater, and unfortunately it turns out the vaccines are theater too.
You know, it works, being healthy, and it looks like the antibodies work, it looks like this new Merck drug works.
joe rogan
Well, I don't think it's fair to say the vaccines are theater if they work initially.
alex berenson
Why?
joe rogan
Because they do work.
alex berenson
Six months?
joe rogan
But they do work for that period of time, and they protect people, right?
alex berenson
Oh, okay.
Fair enough.
Fair enough.
I think this is a legitimate philosophical question.
joe rogan
And they do protect people from more serious illness, even if they allow you to get infected.
That's pretty much been proven, right?
Especially in the efficacy range?
alex berenson
Yes, within that window.
joe rogan
Right.
alex berenson
Of a few months, that's true.
joe rogan
The problem is something has to be done once that window's been established and people are safe, then maybe it's the Merck drug or whether they do tests and prove that it's ivermectin or something else.
There's a Pfizer drug as well, correct?
alex berenson
Yes, there's a Pfizer drug.
And there's a lot of other people testing.
joe rogan
What is the Pfizer drug?
Is it similar to the protease inhibitor?
alex berenson
I believe it's correct.
It also is with replication.
Right.
So, I mean, I think this is a legit question, Joe.
I guess you'd rather get COVID next year than this year.
Why?
Because there's more treatments out there.
So if the vaccines are just delaying, even if they don't work forever, if they delay for six months or a year, is it worth the aggravation to get people vaccinated?
joe rogan
Well, there is a friend of a friend who is an older person who just got COVID very recently, and they were fully vaccinated, and they were very sick.
And they got the monoclonal antibodies, and within 24 hours, they started feeling much better.
36 hours later, they felt really good.
alex berenson
There you go.
So, okay, you want to say, well, if that person had gotten COVID a year plus ago, he or she might have died.
joe rogan
Yeah, it wouldn't be available.
alex berenson
That's right.
joe rogan
There wouldn't be a vaccine, and there wouldn't also be the monoclonal antibodies, and also an understanding of what to do and not to do, like not put people on ventilators, that kind of stuff.
alex berenson
So the argument, okay, delaying is a good thing, and the vaccines are delaying, let's go with that.
joe rogan
Yes.
alex berenson
But...
Here's, I'm going to tell you, the vaccines are not risk-free.
I don't mean that, I don't talk about cost or anything.
I'm talking about this ADE, which we haven't talked about at all.
I mean, we talked about it briefly.
Anybody who tells you that they know what the real risk that ADE might occur in a few months or a year or five years is lying.
I'm not saying it's a high risk.
It could be a very low risk.
But we don't know what the risk really is.
joe rogan
And when you say we don't know what the risk really is, when viruses in general, when they mutate, don't they tend to become less virulent but more contagious?
alex berenson
Yes.
joe rogan
Because that's actually good for the virus.
alex berenson
Yes.
joe rogan
It doesn't kill the host.
It spreads to more people.
alex berenson
That's right.
But the virus isn't making that decision.
It's just doing something that makes it more contagious.
Vaccines change that equation.
And they change it in ways we don't necessarily understand.
joe rogan
Well, Alex, I'm glad you came in here.
And it saddens me that you've been censored.
I don't like it.
I don't like this time we're living in.
I don't like the polarization.
I don't like this tribal bullshit that's going on.
I think it interrupts the conversation and it stops rational discourse.
alex berenson
It's terrible.
joe rogan
It's terrible.
It's terrible for all of us.
Your book, thank you.
alex berenson
Pandemia, they cannot censor it.
It will be out.
I hope you read it.
You are acknowledged in it.
joe rogan
Thank you.
I'm going to read it.
It's going to sell like hotcakes.
I hope so.
It's going to sell like hotcakes, I guarantee you, because this kind of information is difficult to come by.
And there's a lot of people, vaccinated and unvaccinated, that want to know what the fuck is actually going on.
And there's not enough people that are telling the truth.
You're getting these watered-down narratives that are filled with propaganda, and no one knows what to do.
There's a lot of scared people, again, both vaccinated and unvaccinated.
alex berenson
And I'll just leave you...
I know we've got to go.
It's crazy.
When you censor people like me, you drive people to these conspiracies.
joe rogan
Yes, you do.
You do.
That's why I was worried about yournews.com.
alex berenson
Yeah, that's right.
No joke, man!
unidentified
But serious people will talk about depopulation.
joe rogan
Oh, yeah.
No, that's what I was saying.
A doctor was talking to me about that.
And I was like, what?
I was like, I gotta get the fuck out of here.
alex berenson
No, right?
joe rogan
Yeah, they start talking crazy and then they start bringing up stories about billionaires that met at some summit in the early 2000s and talked about having to reduce the population of the world.
What are you saying?
Are you saying they're going to kill everybody?
alex berenson
Alright, thank you, sir.
joe rogan
I appreciate you very much, man.
unidentified
Thanks for having me.
joe rogan
You're a brave man.
You really are.
alex berenson
Dude, I does not feel that way.
I'm sure people say it to you, too.
It just feels like I'm doing what I want to do and trying to tell the truth.
joe rogan
Yeah, I think you're doing what you think is correct, which is discussing things that are uncomfortable for folks.
And things that apparently are true.
I mean, you're only reading studies that are published by serious institutions.
This is not nonsense.
alex berenson
800 footnotes in that book, and not one of them is from yournews.com.
joe rogan
I hope you get reinstated.
I really do.
I think you are a valuable voice on Twitter.
alex berenson
Well, tell your buddy Jack!
joe rogan
He's not going to listen.
alex berenson
Maybe he'll avoid being sued.
joe rogan
I don't know if he's got...
Like I said, it's an uncomfortable conversation.
I don't know how much control he has.
alex berenson
All right.
I guess he's got $10 billion.
He does what he wants.
joe rogan
I don't know what he does, man.
I don't know what he does.
alex berenson
All right, Joe.
unidentified
Thank you.
joe rogan
I really do hope you get back on.
Are you on other platforms?
alex berenson
Just the Substack.
Oh, I have an Instagram now that I just basically use to repost my Substack.
joe rogan
Oh, okay.
alex berenson
Eventually they're going to get smart and cancel me there.
Well, I hope not.
The stack, though, the stack cannot go away.
joe rogan
Okay.
alex berenson
That will be bad.
joe rogan
So sub-stack.
So get to you on sub-stack.
alex berenson
Yes.
All right.
joe rogan
Thanks, Jeff.
unidentified
Thanks.
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