Yale Professor Weighs-in on Anti-Vaxxers | Joe Rogan

which are crucial to our well-being, and one of them is the capacity to openly debate ideas and to expose ourselves to ideas across the gamut. And I'm not just talking about political ideas, I'm talking about scientific ideas. So how are we going to win the battle against anti-vaxxers? Like how are we going to persuade people who believe that vaccines kill people, for which there's no scientific evidence, that they're wrong? We could imprison them, like that's force. We could vote, which is sort of what we're doing, we're saying, okay well you're a minority group who believes these things so we're not going to allow you to control policy. Or we could try to win the battle of ideas and persuade them. Ultimately that's the only path that's, in my view, that gets us to where we want to be. Yeah, and just an honest assessment of the actual data, like what we really know and understanding how these scientists come to these conclusions. But the problem is these echo chambers where people get involved online that magnify all of these beliefs and you get radicalized. I mean I've seen it. Also true. People get involved in these Facebook groups, these anti-vaxx Facebook groups, or you know all sorts of different things. I mean that's how these flat earth people get going. Yes. They start listening only to people that are involved in this circle. They don't have a greater understanding of the science involved. Did you just see, I just saw online there's a cruise to the flat, or a cruise for a flat earth, I don't know if you saw it. To the ice wall. Yeah, the ice wall. I thought that's a new wrinkle because the old flat earthers used to think that the water was shown falling off the disc of the earth, you know, like the edge of the earth, it was just a disc. Now the new theory that there's an ice wall actually, it's kind of not falsifiable. That is to say you could get on a cruise and sail to the edge of the earth and you would find a wall of ice there. So you, Antarctic, so you think, ah, it's flat. In other words, they have redefined their theory to make it so that you can't disprove it. Mm. Right? You don't get to an edge. There's no edge. There's an ice wall is what they're saying now. Anyway. Are you aware of hashtag space is fake? No, I'm not. I have to say, I'm not exposing myself to that set of ideas. There's a bunch of people that believe that space is fake. Okay. That it's not real. That there's no real space and that there's like lights up there and that this is some sort of a plan by Satan. It's a lot of it's very biblical. It's really interesting. A lot of the flat earth stuff is very biblical. That's interesting. It has to do with the firmament and they use descriptions and depictions from the Bible. Oh. Yeah. It's super bizarre. And what's really bizarre is when you listen to the YouTube videos or these discussions that are done by people that use words that are real, they string them together correctly. They have like full sentences. They appear to be articulate. It's very confusing if you're a dummy. If you listen to those, you go, wow, this guy's making a lot of sense. He's not, but it sounds like he's making a lot of sense because he's using all these words that are correctly used. There's no ums. He's saying it articulately. There's like, everything seems like, like, oh my goodness. It should make sense. This man is exposing. He's exposing the reality, but it's not. It's just fucking nonsense. And if you don't know any better and that's all you listen to, that's where your head will go. The same with the anti-vax movement. If you only listen to these anti-vaxxers, they're making so much sense. Like, oh my God, it's giving everybody all sorts of ailments. You're on the spectrum. And they have a theory of how it does that, which is not, it uses, as you say, scientific words, but it's actually not scientifically correct. It does this, which then does that, which then does that. They lay out a kind of causal chain, which is false. And then there's a problem of nuance and perspective because there's so many people that get vaccinated. There's hundreds of millions of people in this country, billions of people worldwide. And then there are instances, rare occurrences, where people have real issues with vaccinations. Well, there are some where they have real issues. So for example, there's some vaccines which are known to cause certain neurological conditions, rarely one out of a million or one out of a hundred thousand vaccinations. More commonly is the situation in which you have vaccination is so common, everyone is getting vaccinated. And often that occurs near to an occurrence of some other rare condition. And people associate the two. They think, oh, because of the vaccine this happened. No, it's a coincidence. Either or. Yes, there's both. And there's also, if it's one out of a million, you have 300 million people. Exactly. You have three million. I mean, one million people with an issue is a big deal. With 300 million people. You easily could have 300 really big cases. 300 cases where people have died from vaccines and then you bring those in front of people and say, oh my God. And then there's this one and this one, this one. And there's 298 more and you're like, holy shit. All these people are dying from vaccines. It doesn't feel good if it's your child. But when we look at the greater perspective of humanity and you say, well, listen, you don't want to bring back smallpox. You don't want your child to get measles. Babies can get measles when they can't even be vaccinated for it. This is one of the reasons why we need to vaccinate children to make sure they don't get measles. This is a serious fucking problem. And a serious problem that scientists have labored for untold decades to try to cure. It's a triumph of our civilization that we can actually stop these diseases. Yes. And save children's lives. I had a woman yesterday who is an expert. She's a medical historian, an expert in Victorian era surgery, Lindsay Fitzharris. And she wrote this great book called The Butchering Art. And in it, there's all these images. One of them she brought up of what smallpox actually looks like when people get it. It's horrible. It just covers people's bodies. You've eradicated it. Yes. It's painful and you die from it. People have, it's actually gone. We don't get it anymore in this country. It's fucking incredible.