Episode 1475: Bridget Phetasy

TL;DR: A May 2020 conversation during the early pandemic that platformed COVID-19 misinformation — including the false claim that ventilators were harming patients — alongside premature dismissals of lockdowns and amplification of the “Obamagate” conspiracy.

Bridget Phetasy is a writer and comedian (host of “Walk-Ins Welcome” and “Dumpster Fire”), not a public health expert, infectious disease specialist, or medical professional. This episode aired on May 16, 2020 — roughly two months into the U.S. pandemic, when scientific understanding of COVID-19 was still evolving and the consequences of misinformation were measurable in lives.

The Core Problems

The episode treated nascent, contested early-pandemic talking points as established truth while dismissing public health measures. Several claims are now demonstrably false.

Claim 1: “Ventilators were harming patients”

Suggestion that placing COVID patients on ventilators was actively making them worse and may have contributed to deaths.

This narrative spread widely in spring 2020 and was misleading.

What the evidence actually shows:

The New England Journal of Medicine (2020): Mechanical ventilation remained the standard of care for severe ARDS in COVID-19; outcomes varied by patient severity, not because ventilators themselves were harmful. Link
AMA (2020): Patients placed on ventilators were the sickest patients with the worst prognoses — high mortality reflected disease severity, not ventilator harm. Link
Cleveland Clinic / multiple ICU reviews: Earlier intubation in severe hypoxia was associated with better outcomes than delayed intubation in many cases.

The “ventilators are killing people” frame discouraged appropriate medical treatment at a time when ICU care was the difference between life and death for severe cases.

Claim 2: Vitamin D as a primary COVID strategy

Heavy emphasis on vitamin D deficiency as the explanation for severe COVID outcomes, with the implication that public health should focus on supplements over distancing/masking.

What the evidence says:

NIH COVID-19 Treatment Guidelines: There is insufficient evidence to recommend for or against vitamin D supplementation for COVID-19 prevention or treatment. Link
Cochrane Review (2021): Vitamin D supplementation showed no clear clinical benefit for COVID-19 outcomes. Link
Correlation between low vitamin D and severe COVID is confounded by obesity, age, and underlying conditions — the same factors that cause both low vitamin D and severe COVID.

Why it matters: Framing vitamin D as a substitute for collective public health measures gave audiences a false sense of personal control while undermining the case for distancing, masking, and vaccination once available.

Claim 3: Lockdowns are pointless because “there’s no cure”

Mocking Mayor Garcetti’s statement that LA would remain locked down “until there’s a cure,” arguing no cure exists for coronaviruses.

This conflates “cure” with “vaccine” and ignores the actual purpose of lockdowns:

Lockdowns were intended to flatten the curve — prevent hospital system collapse and buy time for treatments and vaccines.
A COVID-19 vaccine (Pfizer/BioNTech) received FDA emergency use authorization in December 2020, just seven months after this episode aired. Link
Multiple effective treatments (dexamethasone, monoclonal antibodies, eventually Paxlovid) emerged.

Claim 4: “Obamagate”

The episode entertained the Trump-era “Obamagate” framing — the conspiracy theory that President Obama orchestrated a deep-state plot against Trump.

DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz (2019): Found errors in the Carter Page FISA application but no evidence of political bias motivating the investigation. Link
Special Counsel John Durham (2023 final report): Despite a multi-year investigation, secured no convictions of major figures and produced no evidence supporting the “Obamagate” framing. Link
Trump himself, asked to specify the crime, could not. Washington Post coverage

Joe Rogan’s Role

Rogan was not a passive host here. He:

Amplified the ventilator misinformation rather than challenging it or noting its absence of medical consensus.
Promoted vitamin D as a centerpiece of pandemic response — a pattern that would continue through dozens of subsequent episodes.
Mocked public health officials without acknowledging the uncertainty all officials were operating under in May 2020.
Did not fact-check the “Obamagate” framing or note the absence of evidence.

This episode is part of an early pattern in which Rogan, with one of the largest podcast audiences in the world, treated his own gym-and-supplement-based health intuitions as equivalent in weight to epidemiology.

Real-World Harm

A 2022 open letter from 270+ medical professionals called on Spotify to address COVID misinformation on JRE, citing the platforming of false claims about treatments and public health measures. Rolling Stone
The Lancet (2021) and other journals documented that COVID misinformation contributed to vaccine hesitancy, delayed treatment-seeking, and excess deaths. Link
The “ventilators are killing people” narrative, in particular, was cited by hospitals as a reason some patients refused appropriate care.

Bottom Line

Episode 1475 is a snapshot of how early-pandemic misinformation got laundered through casual long-form conversation: two non-experts confidently dismissing public health measures, amplifying clinical claims they were unqualified to evaluate, and endorsing a political conspiracy theory — all without pushback. The harm wasn’t hypothetical. It compounded across the months and years that followed.