#2437 - Rand Paul

Joe Rogan (0:01)

Joe Rogan Podcast, checking out The Joe Rogan Experience.

Joe Rogan (0:06)

Shrain by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day.

Joe Rogan (0:12)

Nice to meet you, sir.

Rand Paul (0:13)

Thanks for having me. Great to be in Austin.

Joe Rogan (0:16)

You've been here before.

Rand Paul (0:18)

I grew up in Texas, and so we used to come up here for live music. I went to Baylor and there was no music, no dancing. If you want to hear some live music, you came to Austin. So I've been here many times.

Joe Rogan (0:29)

Nice. It's a great spot. So here's your book, Deception, The Great Cover-Up. You were a lone voice of reason during the pandemic. For me, you were extremely valuable, and I was cheering you on every step of the way. When you were grilling Anthony Fauci, with all due respect, you do not know what you are talking about.

That guy was driving me fucking crazy. It was mind-numbing how many people were going along with it, and how many people just accepted what he was saying, ignored all the evidence that pointed to gain-of-function research, didn't freak out when it was quite obvious that he was lying about gain-of-function research. And I just thank God that you were grilling him, and at least it was on the record, and we could all watch it and see it.

Rand Paul (1:23)

One of the greatest tragedies, and we knew this within days, was that children weren't getting sick, but that should have been used to our advantage. Children did not get sick. No child without a health issue really died.

Joe Rogan (1:36)

Well, they got sick, but it wasn't dangerous for them. My kids both got it.

Rand Paul (1:41)

Right, but most of them had a very mild illness. And the point is, is that we knew this in China in the first couple of weeks, and we could have left the schools open. And some countries left the schools open. And for the most part, Sweden left their schools open and treated this completely different, and turned out with a similar, everybody wound up with a similar death rate with primarily the people dying where people were older and overweight, or both.

Joe Rogan (2:04)

Right, and the argument was, you're going to bring it home, and you're going to infect your grandma, and she's going to die. All right.

Rand Paul (2:11)

The argument didn't really hold water, though, because everybody got it anyway. And so...

Joe Rogan (2:15)

But we didn't know that in the beginning, right? In the beginning, they were lying, and they were saying that, although we now know that there was no data that showed that the vaccine stopped infection, stopped transmission.

Rand Paul (2:25)

But here's another thought. You could have said, yeah, kids could take it to their grandparents, so until the kid has gotten it and recovered for two weeks, tell them not to visit their grandparents. You know what I mean?

Joe Rogan (2:35)

Well, the problem was people that live with their grandparents.

Rand Paul (2:38)

Yeah, I know. And that would be the exceptions to the rule. But most of the people, the death rate we already knew in China was very, very small once you added in the kids. Initially, they were saying it was a 3% death rate, which would have been, instead of 1 million people, you know, would have been significantly more, 3 million people may have died. But they knew that the death rate was less than that in China early on. But part of the reason they thought it was so high is they weren't counting all the asymptomatic cases. You know, they knew how many people were sick and how many people died. But the denominator was the number of people who actually were sick or who actually got the infection, but they weren't counting millions of people.

And but Anthony Fauci denied this at every step. He denied that natural immunity would protect you. And one of my favorite quotes was from a guy named Martin Koldorf. He was an epidemiologist at Harvard who ended up getting fired. But recently he tweeted out, it was about a year or two ago, he said, well, we knew about natural immunity from the time of the Athenian plague in 436 BC. And we knew that knowledge until 2020, then we lost all knowledge of natural immunity. But the good news is, in 2025, we're starting to get back that knowledge. But this was, Anthony Fauci knew better, you know. He couldn't even read his own basic immunology books about, you know, the fact that you do develop immunity. Is it perfect? No. Can you get Covid more than once? Yes. But I defy you to tell me somebody who got it the second time, who died the second time. You know what I mean? People got it less severely so the second time they got it, if they got it at all.