Joe Rogan has claimed lockdowns “don’t stop the spread” of Covid-19 in his first Spotify podcast back after facing a massive backlash for spreading pandemic misinformation.
Rogan also incorrectly claimed the Canadian city Montreal was under a 10pm curfew in a new episode of The Joe Rogan Experience released on Friday.
Montreal’s 10pm to 5am curfew to hold the spread of the Omicron variant was lifted on 17 January.
“What’s going on right now in Montreal is that they have a 10pm curfew, which is just wild,” Rogan said in a new episode with retired Navy Seal Andy Stumpf.
“What happens after 10? They’re shutting down restaurants and bars in parts of Canada where they are already barely staying open, they were already barely alive,” he said.
“It’s been pretty clear up until this point that all these lockdowns don’t work. They don’t stop the spread.”
A peer-reviewed study of lockdowns published in Nature in 2020 estimated lockdowns had likely saved up to three million lives in Europe during the first wave of Covid-19.
It’s the first podcast Rogan had released in a week after an outcry over his inflammatory remarks about Covid-19 resulted in artists Neil Young and Joni Mitchell demanding their music be removed from Spotify.
Rogan issued an apology and admitted he could do more to better inform his estimated 11 million listeners per episode.
In a nearly 10-minute long video posted on Instagram, Rogan said he was open to making changes to the show including booking more mainstream experts and doing more research.
Spotify CEO Daniel Ek addressed the controversy in the company’s earnings call this week.
Mr Ek said the streaming service was trying to “balance creative expression with the safety of our users”.
“I think the important part here is that we don’t change our policies based on one creator, nor do we change it based on any media cycle,” Mr Ek said.
