White defends Rogan on COVID-19: ‘They’re keeping medicine that works from us’

The UFC Vegas 46 post-fight press conference took a left turn into a debate on Joe Rogan’s COVID-19 opinions, with UFC president Dana White sharing a few eyebrow raising opinions of his own.

Rogan has been no stranger to controversy since the pandemic began and was recently the subject of a letter signed by over 200 physicians objecting to his spreading of COVID-19 misinformation. Asked about the letter following Saturday’s fight, White shared a little misinformation of his own.

“Are they really?” he said regarding the doctors calling on Spotify to do something about Rogan. “Well, how about this: ever since I came out and said what I did, it’s almost impossible to get monoclonal antibodies. They’re making it so you can’t get them. Medicine that absolutely works, they’re keeping from us.”

“I don’t want to get too political and start getting into all this s—t, but ivermectin and monoclonal antibodies have been around for a long time. Now all of a sudden you can’t dig them up to save your life, the doctors won’t give them to you.”

“Even when I did it here in Vegas, when I had [COVID-19] right before Christmas, I made one phone call and I was able to get it done,” White continued. “And that’s not some rich famous guy s—t. Anybody could’ve called and got it back then. Now Rogan’s been talking about it and I went crazy talking about it, you can’t get those things to save your life now, literally.”

“It’s disgusting. It’s one of the craziest things I’ve ever witnessed in my life. And we’re not talking about experimental drugs or things – this stuff’s been around. Ivermectin, the guy won a Nobel Peace Prize.”

White isn’t wrong about how it’s much harder to get monoclonal antibodies these days, but there’s no vast conspiracy at work. The issue is that two of the three effective monoclonal antibody treatments against COVID-19 don’t work on the Omicron strain of the virus.

According to the New York Times, the US government has contracted with GlaxoSmithKline and Vir Biotechnology to get another 300,000 treatments of the remaining effective monoclonal antibody, sotrovimab, to the states in January at $2100 a pop. But with 2022 currently seeing over 500,000 new cases per day in the US (848,000 on Saturday alone) you’re damn right the stuff’s going to be hard to get, and not because doctors are unhappy about Joe Rogan talking about it on his podcast.

As for Ivermectin, it is a wonder drug when used as an anti-parasitic. As of today there’s still no peer reviewed study that proves it is effective in treating COVID-19.

After Dana’s comments, Yahoo! Sports reporter Kevin Iole spoke up, asking White “Are you a doctor?”

“See, there, here he comes!” White said with a laugh. “No. But I took them, and they both worked for me, so why shouldn’t I be able to take them again? Or other people? No, come on, dive in. You want to know what’s scary? You can get some [expletive] pain pills quicker than I can get monoclonal antibodies. Not maybe, that is a fact. They f—kin’ hand out pain pills like they’re tictacs.”

“Monoclonal antibodies and ivermectin isn’t gonna do anything to you,” White concluded. “Pain pills kill you. Fact. And I’m not a doctor, but that’s a fact.”