#1865 - Aaron Rodgers

Joe Rogan (0:04)

The Joe Rogan Experience. So it's good to see you, man.

Aaron Rodgers (0:14)

Good to see you, man.

Joe Rogan (0:15)

My pleasure. How you doing?

Aaron Rodgers (0:17)

I'm doing great. Yeah, it's been an interesting year or so, but man, it's been a good year.

Joe Rogan (0:23)

What was the craziness like? Like when all the people were calling you a plague rat, and...

I mean, it's you and the... How do you say the guy's name, the tennis player?

Aaron Rodgers (0:36)

Novak Djokovic.

Joe Rogan (0:37)

Yeah, Djokovic. I mean, we talk about the healthiest human beings on Earth, professional athletes.

Aaron Rodgers (0:44)

Open now.

Joe Rogan (0:44)

Yeah, I know.

Aaron Rodgers (0:45)

Because of this.

Joe Rogan (0:45)

Which is bananas. The guy's already had COVID, recovered from it. I think he had it twice.

And he's one of the best athletes in the world. I mean, the guy's body's in tip-top condition.

Aaron Rodgers (0:57)

Fitness players are incredible fitness.

Joe Rogan (0:59)

Incredible. Yeah, and no, you can't come. You didn't follow the rules.

It defies science, defies logic. It doesn't make any sense. None of it makes sense. Especially at this stage of the pandemic, air quotes. I mean, what the fuck, man?

What was it like for you?

Aaron Rodgers (1:18)

It was really difficult, for sure.

And a lot of different reasons. I think I knew that this was coming down. That at some point, I was gonna talk about my status because I'd chosen to not get vaxxed for reasons that you talked about on your show and I talked about on-

Joe Rogan (1:39)

We should just say it because it's kind of important. You're allergic to a medication or a part of the vaccine.

Aaron Rodgers (1:49)

Right.

Joe Rogan (1:49)

What is it called?

Aaron Rodgers (1:50)

PEG, polyethylene glycol.

And so I did my research. Now, I think typically speaking, because I'm healthy and I take care of myself, getting vaccinated was not on the top of my list, but I wanted to look into it because everybody was doing it and talking about it and trying to be safe. And I wanted to make sure I was doing my part if that's what was necessary to keep myself safe and my loved ones safe and my teammates safe. And I looked into it, and at the time, I went on the CDC website and they specifically said, you know, if you're alert to PEG, we do not recommend you get vaccinated with the mRNA vaccinations. So the only other one available was Johnson & Johnson, and it had just got pulled at the time for blood clots. So I looked into other options, which included an immunization process through a holistic doctor, and I researched and talked to probably a dozen different MDs, and found a protocol that I felt like was the best available.

Joe Rogan (3:03)

And what's involved in that protocol?

Aaron Rodgers (3:05)

It involved basically a couple month process of taking a diluted strand of the virus. So I was doing basically what the vaccine is supposed to do without-

Joe Rogan (3:21)

How do they do that?

Aaron Rodgers (3:23)

I don't know the exact way that they did that, but-

Joe Rogan (3:28)

It was by injection?

Aaron Rodgers (3:29)

No, no, it was oral.

Joe Rogan (3:35)

How are they even getting a diluted strand of the virus?

Aaron Rodgers (3:38)

I don't know that exactly, or want to get into that exactly, I don't think.

But there was hundreds and hundreds, if not thousands of people that I knew in this circle that were using, that had been doing this to protect ourselves, because we were thinking, hey, look, for me, I didn't want to risk anaphylactic shock or any type of clotting associated with the vaccine. So that was my only option, either do nothing or do this process. And I felt like that this was the best way to protect myself and my teammates and that the NFL would understand and maybe grant me a waiver because one of the most difficult parts about the whole process was that there was clearly two classes of player at the facility. There was the vaxxed and the unvaxxed. And the vaxxed had full privileges. They tested once every two weeks. They had full privileges on the road.

They could go out to dinner on the road. They could go to a concert in town. They could go to a comedy show that was in town. They could be at any place they wanted to and live life normally. Non-vaxxed, fully masked, zero privileges on the road, could not go into establishments of more than 15 people. You could not be around more than three individuals from the team outside the facility, all these different, what I think now we all realize were crazy policies.