Joe Rogan

On November 10, 2021, Lead Stories published a fact check about an article published by the British Medical Journal (BMJ) on November 2, 2021. In response, the BMJ published an open letter to Mark Zuckerberg on December 17, 2021, calling our fact check "inaccurate, incompetent and irresponsible." We addressed their concerns in a December 18, 2021, article, going over their…

Do fully vaccinated people account for 82% of recent COVID-19 deaths and 66% of hospitalizations in the UK? Yes, that's true. The figures are found in the COVID-19 vaccine surveillance report - Week 43 by the UK Health Security Agency published on October 28, 2021. But the numbers don't tell the full story -- the report from which the percentages…

Did Joe Rogan lose his Spotify deal and millions of dollars after he promoted the horse dewormer, ivermectin, as the cure for COVID-19? No, that's not true: The blog that wrote the claim, Laughing in Disbelief, is a satirical blog with a disclaimer on its content. Rogan is still making content for his podcast, "The Joe Rogan Experience," and Spotify…

Does a 2019 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guideline for treatment of refugees "blow a hole" in the widely reported warnings against use of veterinary ivermectin to treat COVID-19? No, that's not true: The human formulation of the drug is specifically intended to kill worms and other harmful parasites, which is why the CDC in 2019 urged ivermectin…

Has ivermectin been proven a safe and life-saving treatment for COVID-19? No, that's not true: The manufacturer of the drug, Merck, says its scientists find no evidence ivermectin works as a COVID-19 treatment and are concerned by the lack of safety data in studies of human use of it. The drug is a dewormer for horses and cows that is…

Does an ICU nurse give proof that ivermectin is effective at treating COVID-19? No, that's not true: Ivermectin, which is frequently used to treat or prevent parasites in animals, is not approved for treating or preventing COVID-19 in humans. In fact, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) specifically warns people not to take it for those reasons. The person who…

Were Democrats "caught" not wearing masks at the White House? No, that's not true: They were not wearing masks at a May 20, 2021, event at the White House because they were following the Centers for Disease Control guidelines. As of May 13, 2021, the CDC said vaccinated individuals could gather indoors without masks. The claim appeared in a video…

Did the mail-in vote count (2,589,242) in the presidential election in Pennsylvania exceed the actual number of ballots sent to voters (supposedly 1,823,148) and were 1,126,940 votes "created out of thin air"? No, that's not true: The Pennsylvania Department of State's website for election returns shows that about 2.6 million mail-in ballots had indeed been counted as of November 27,2020.…

Will spending time in a sauna or aiming a hairdryer towards your nose kill the coronavirus? No, that's not true: This is not sound medical advice. A viral video making the rounds suggests those home remedies. However, doctors say those efforts will not kill the novel coronavirus, and in some cases, could do some damage. The claim surfaced in a…

Can the novel coronavirus survive the heat? And, specifically, will 15 minutes in a sauna kill the virus? No, that's not true: An internationally recognized expert in infectious disease epidemiology has quashed those assertions. The claims originated in a post (archived here) published on Facebook by Irina Maryanchik on March 7, 2020. It opened: Viruses cannot live in the hot…