This is such a critical point, because so many anti-vaxxers are running around social media using Malone like a sledgehammer.

The fact is, he is not a subject matter expert. He did some theoretical work over 30 years ago that helped provide the basis for some of the technology that became mRNA vaccines, about which he knows practically nothing, at least according to working virologists who ought to know.

That Rogan is giving a platform to his discredited, wild conspiracy theories — that Rogan is helping normalize his wild conspiracy theories — is just one reason Spotify has no business paying Rogan or promoting him.

I’m thinking back to the AIDS era, to the mid-1990s when effective treatment finally came out, treatment that save lives by stopping HIV infection from progressing to AIDS. Wild conspiracy theorists existed then too. They told people that the treatment would kill them rather than save them. Some people believed that nonsense, but credible media would not platform them. Truth won out, and wild conspiracy theories petered out.

I mentioned that because just the other day after I published a small article about a new HIV variant that bears watching, a woman on Twitter lectured me about how HIV treatments kill people rather than save their lives. She presumed to lecture me even though I watched close friends get out of their deathbeds and live again when they started treatment. Many are alive and thriving today because they’re on effective HIV treatment.

I went to her profile and learned she’s a prominent anti-vaxxer and covid-19 denialist. I also learned she isn’t even old enough to have directly experienced the HIV crisis at its height.

But to her, covid vaccines and Dr. Anthony Fauci are the devil.

This is the kind of bullshit Rogan is promoting. Spotify must stop him if they wish to be responsible actors on the national stage.