Information reaching Kossyderrickent has it that Alex Rosen, identified as the man who stormed Dr. Peter Hotez’s house to harass him over vaccine conspiracy spread by Joe Rogan and RFK Jr. (Read More Here).
Taking to social media, Alex Rosen, revealed that he had turned himself in to the police for his silly actions.
That prompted Dr. Hotez, an MD/PhD who is Dean for the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, to label Kennedy’s statements as “misinformation.” Hotez retweeted Vice’s story “Spotify Has Stopped Even Sort of Trying to Stem Joe Rogan’s Vaccine Misinformation” writing, “Just awful. And from all the online attacks I’m receiving after this absurd podcast, it’s clear many actually believe this nonsense.”
Hotez told his Twitter followers Sunday that the Houston resident “was stalked in front of my home by a couple of antivaxers taunting me to debate RFKJr”—less than 24 hours after the initial Twitter argument began.
Minutes later, a Twitter personality posted a video that appeared to show himself and another person shouting questions at Hotez outside a home, asking why Hotez wasn’t going to debate Kennedy and if the vaccine scientist believes “vaccine injuries” are real (it’s unclear whether the video corresponds to the incident Hotez mentioned).
After Peter Hotez, a leading vaccine researcher and expert who helped develop the COVID vaccine Corbevax, called out Democratic presidential candidate and anti-vaxxer Robert R. Kennedy Jr for spreading “nonsense” on Joe Rogan’s podcast, Rogan offered Hotez $100,000 to debate Kennedy on his podcast.
Kennedy appeared on The Joe Rogan Experience on Thursday and repeated his claim that routine vaccinations cause autism. Rogan then offered Hotez $100,000 to debate Kennedy on his podcast, to which Hotez responded, “Joe, you have my cell, you have my email, I’m always willing to speak to you.”
When Rogan called the reply a “non-answer,” the virologist responded, “Joe if you are serious about addressing vaccines + the fact that 200,000 unvaccinated Americans needlessly perished during our awful delta/BA.1 Covid waves (including 40,000 in our state of Texas) because they fell victims to vaccine disinformation: I want to have that discussion.”
Kennedy, a nephew of President John F. Kennedy and the son of his slain brother Robert F. Kennedy, was once a bestselling author and environmental lawyer who worked on issues such as clean water.
But more than 15 years ago, he became fixated on a belief that vaccines are not safe. He emerged as one of the leading voices in the anti-vaccine movement, and his work has been described by public health experts and even members of his own family as misleading and dangerous.
Hotez—who has previously appeared on Rogan’s show—agreed to go on Rogan’s podcast “to clear the air,” but in separate tweets Hotez said he wanted to discuss getting more people vaccines and vaccine misinformation—an offer that Rogan didn’t see as a response to his request for Hotez to debate Kennedy.
The scientist has also retweeted several people who chided the idea of debating Kennedy, including one who called the suggestion “absurd” since Kennedy—who is well-known for his vaccine skepticism—is a “crank.”
Weird is one word for Kennedy’s bid, which has won support from figures as disparate as Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, quarterback Aaron Rodgers, actor Alicia Silverstone, and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. It’s a guerrilla operation staffed by longtime friends and colleagues from Kennedy’s many previous lives—as an environmental lawyer, prolific author, master falconer, Hollywood husband, and anti-vaccine crusader. So far, the candidate has spent more time chatting on podcasts and livestreams than visiting with voters. Instead of dropping in on New Hampshire coffee shops, he’s given a speech at a Miami Bitcoin conference, appeared on Twitter Spaces with Elon Musk, and is slated to be interviewed on June 14 on Joe Rogan’s wildly popular podcast.
More striking than the medium is the message—a kind of MAGA for Democrats that stands in stark contrast to the optimism that defined the campaigns of his father and uncle. Kennedy sounds simultaneously stuck in the past and jarringly online, his worldview dark and suspicious. He speaks about a time when the country’s waters were not polluted, pharmaceutical companies did not poison children, bioweapons did not threaten to destroy humanity, and people trusted the government not to lie to or silence them. “I feel like my country is being taken away from me,” he tells TIME. “I want to restore in many ways the America of my youth, the America I was brought up in.”
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