Dr. Antonia Fortis, 62, a leading immunologist who has worked on vaccines for nearly four decades, says that she has read countless stories about people, including some high-profile individuals, who have refused to get vaccinated and lost their jobs in the process. “At first I thought they were stupid. But I was wrong. They were the smart ones. They can sleep late. Me, I’m vaccinated, so I didn’t get canned. I still have to get up every morning at six and come to work.”

Fortis says she also experienced other side effects after being vaccinated, for example, a sore arm and a fever, but that they all went away after a day. Yet five months after her booster, her employment as a scientist—one whose life’s work and contributions to public health are often dismissed or even derided by conspiracy theorists and anti-vaxxers—just won’t go away but instead lingers. With a straight face showing signs of extreme fatigue, she says, “For me, employment includes comorbid symptoms such as shortness of breath and headaches, especially when I read the bullshit from people like Robert Malone making the rounds on social media and other online platforms.”

One might wonder why the good doctor doesn’t just quit. “Excellent question,” she says when asked. “First of all, I believe in science, I believe in math, I believe in vaccines. I’m not saying vaccines are perfect. There’s always going to be some risk. But for almost everyone, the benefits far outweigh the risk.” She notes that scientists like her are very excited about what the future may hold for vaccines for other diseases, such as malaria and even cancer. “So,” she says, taking a deep breath, “although my continued employment has really sucked at times, in the end it means I’m still paying my bills and making a contribution to society. Oh, and I’m also alive and breathing on my own.”

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A 42nd-degree Vantablack® belt in the obscure, ancient Japanese art of harakiri karate, greatest grandmaster Franklin Dukes, 52, claims that he once almost offed himself while practicing an ultra deadly karate-chop technique. He says that while performing an empty-hand form in which the outer ridge of the palm is used as a blade for chopping and slashing at the opponent, he accidentally grazed his own midsection. He swears his “belly just opened up as if cut by a real blade, with guts spilling out.” Though training by himself at the time, he says he remained calm, tightened his uniform like a tourniquet around his bleeding abdomen, got in his car, and drove himself to the ER an hour away, listening to Japanese Zen music as a distraction the entire way. He remembers a sharp-witted surgeon telling him he made it just in the nick of time.

One veteran martial arts teacher who was also a former professional fighter says that he is skeptical of Dukes’ claims. The instructor would comment only if he could remain anonymous, saying sardonically that he is not afraid of what Dukes might do to him but instead he is afraid of what Dukes might do to himself. He notes that traditional martial arts sometimes attract people who are a bit detached from reality. “That’s why,” he says, “you get so many martial arts students who think they can beat a seasoned, professional fighter just by poking out their eyeballs or kicking them in the nuts. It ain’t that easy. People get hurt when they try shit like that, and it’s usually the ones who are trying shit like that who get hurt.” He clarifies that traditional martial arts can be used effectively for self-defense and for fighting, including learning to hit areas on the body that could lead to death through, say, the stoppage of the heart. But he is quick to add that he highly doubts Dukes’ knife-hand story. “I just don’t believe it,” he says. “And I’ve been around the martial arts for almost 30 years. Once I even saw a guy knock himself out with his own kick. But for someone to slice their own stomach open with their bare hand—frankly, it’s ridiculous. I bet his scar is from surgery to repair a hernia he got while lifting too many bottles of sake.”

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“Look,” Rogan said, “I can sing. I can write, too.” As proof, he referred to his seminal song, “Voodoo Punanny,” which he wrote and sang and which Warner Bros. Records produced in 2000. He then questioned how relevant Young and Mitchell really are today, noting that Young’s best-known hit, “Heart of Gold,” has largely circular lyrics and an unsatisfying ending with no climax. In contrast, “Voodoo Punanny,” he said, tells the story of a one-night stand a man had with a young woman named Ilene, whose “ultra hot fox mammy jammy” culminated in the orgasm of his life. The song ends with a clever, surprise twist for listeners: as a result of the fling, the man has a son, whom he has been warning about the “nuclear powered” voodoo punanny. “Neil Young,” Rogan said, “is irrelevant.” Then, apparently referring to lyrics from Young’s “Heart of Gold,” he said, “He ain’t gettin’ old—he is old.” After taking a hit from a bong, Rogan then seemed to confuse Joni Mitchell with another legendary and long since deceased singer when he concluded, “And when was the last time Janis Joplin did anything?”

With around 11 million regular listeners, Rogan’s podcast is one of the most popular—and perhaps most polarizing, at least recently—in the world. Fans and supporters appear to see him as the voice of freedom of speech and, in some cases, the voice of reason. Former attorney now award-winning journalist Glenn Greenwald sees the recent Spotify boycotts by Young and Mitchell as left-influenced censorship that he views as a cause célèbre in the fight against liberals’ “petty-tyrant tactics.” On the other hand, Rogan’s critics, most of whom aren’t lawyers or award-winning journalists but who actually know right from wrong, see his dissemination of misinformation during the COVID pandemic as a public-health threat. Rogan has issued an apology of sorts over the Malone episode, but one industry observer noted that if legendary musicians Eric Clapton and Van Morrison, who are prominent anti-vaxxers/conspiracy theorists, partnered with Rogan, the three could even do covers of the catalog of Crosby, Stills, and Nash, another group that recently removed its music from Spotify.

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NBC’s chief medical correspondent, Dr. Gillian Chung, M.D., Sc.D., Ph.D., M.S., M.B.A., B.S., B.A., A.S., A.A., who got an A+ in high school biology but was not involved in the survey, says that some of the rankings make sense when you consider how anti-vaxxers think. For example, she says, No. 1 would be a pretty obvious “gimme the vaccine now” for them because if they didn’t get the vaccine for the Say the Opposite of What You Mean Disease [youtu.be], they would essentially turn into exactly who they rail against and even hate: people who are in touch with reality and support vaccines. She considers the Ripley virus at No. 3 also a no-brainer near the top. “It’s alien,” she says, “with hundreds of teeth that bite through steel, and the young versions, called ‘shit weasels,’ can escape your body by eating between your stomach and anus. So you can bet the pharmacy that even the most stubborn or paranoid of anti-vaxxers would be rolling up their sleeves to avoid that shit from happening to them.”

However, Dr. Chung says that there are some things in the rankings she can’t quite figure out. For example, No. 2 makes no sense at all to her. “Sure,” she says, “the Smurfy pink plague is a horrible disease for smurfs, but there’s no evidence that it would make the jump to humans. I’ve gotten my COVID booster, but I wouldn’t get the Smurfy pink plague vaccine.” She suspects that the reason it was ranked so high is that many anti-vaxxers consider Dabbler Smurf (aka, Doctor Smurf) a real doctor compared to Dr. Anthony Fauci, who many anti-vaxxers believe to be a fraud or evil or both. Dr. Chung also can’t understand how flesh-eating bacteria, which is real, ended up in the rankings and why, when it did, it came in so low, at No. 7. “Necrotizing fasciitis is pretty horrific,” she says, referring to the medical term for flesh-eating bacteria. She then pauses for a moment, before concluding, “But so is COVID, which kills more Americans in a day than necrotizing fasciitis kills in a year. And that, to me, makes COVID way scarier than any disease in this ranking. Anti-vaxxers should get real because COVID is real. And they should get vaccinated.”

FOX News/CNN Survey Results of Fictional Diseases That Would Make Anti-Vaxxers Rethink Vaccines

No. 1  Say the Opposite of What You Mean Disease (from a deleted scene of “Ace Ventura: Pet Detective”)
No. 2   Smurfy pink plague (from “The Smurfs”)
No. 3   The Ripley virus (from “Dreamcatcher”)
No. 4   Mad Zombie Disease (from “Zombieland”)
No. 5   Motaba (from “Outbreak”)
No. 6   The Andromeda strain (from “The Andromeda Strain”)
No. 7   Flesh-eating bacteria (from reality)
No. 8   Rage or human cortico-deficiency virus (from “28 Days Later” and “28 Weeks Later”)
No. 9  Spattergroit (from “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix” and “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows”)
No. 10  Purity/the black oil (from “The X-Files”)

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Expected to make a full recovery, Cindy Mei Pin Chun, 23, says from her hospital bed that she was returning to her dorm after an English class on idioms when, lost in thought, she stepped off the curb right into the path of an SUV. She says she became separated from her physical self upon impact and saw her body thrown 20 feet, after which she walked over to it. She said that as she stood, distraught, beside it, she began to fret about her family back in China, about the leftovers in her fridge, and about the assignment on idioms that was due the following week. It was that last thought, she says, that triggered an overwhelming feeling of worry—which is also when the meaning of being “beside oneself” finally dawned on her. Overcome by fear that she would miss an assignment, something she had never done before, she claims she then re-entered her lifeless body.

Christopher Linfield, 53, a paramedic who arrived on scene, says that at first glance Chun appeared to be dead. And, despite being a 22-year veteran with the Boston Fire Department, he says he had to drag himself out of his ambulance. “To see such a beautiful young woman lying there motionless,” he says, his voice cracking, “was too much to bear.” But with the help of the crutch he uses for his bad knee, he says he eventually made it over to Chun and checked for a pulse. “At first, nothing. But then it was as if something passed by me. No, more like through me. So, I checked again. Just to be sure.” He says he was shocked to find a faint but undeniable pulse. He stabilized her, adding that he had to practically pry a textbook, the Oxford Dictionary of Idioms, from her cold, nearly dead hands.

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Jim Gruden, 47, said that he’s been homeless for almost 10 years since getting laid off as a writer at a competitor to The Onion. Disheartened and unable to find work, he’d given up writing until last year, when around April he spray-painted on a building near an H&R Block tax preparation center, “I don’t pay any income tax, ask me how, call 555-321-6866.” He said he got dozens of calls, though no one found it funny when he told them his secret was that he was homeless. So, the next time, he tagged simply, “I don’t have a mortgage, #homeless.” A passerby took a photo of it and posted it on social media, where it went viral—and caught the eye of The Onion’s publisher, who reached out to him.

Though many of The Onion’s staff, especially its writers and editors, thought Gruden’s hire was the ultimate in irony—and perhaps just a publicity stunt during a time of increased competition, especially from rival satire and humor news site The Rapscallion—he said within the first week he had earned the respect of most. He said he also was pleasantly surprised to find that his writing would now reach a slightly larger audience than it did when he was homeless. But, most importantly, he observed that The Onion staff and he definitely felt a kinship with each other. “Satirists and humorists are really just homeless people,” he concluded. “The only difference is the homeless make more. Way more.”

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Rogan, whose podcast has become increasingly popular among conspiracy theorists and anti-vaxxers, sympathized with Beni, at one point telling him he had a bulletproof case against the Getty, as it is commonly known, and then offering to set up a legal fund to sue it. Beni thanked Rogan for his support, telling him, “Your strength gives me strength,” before adding, “I need a new job.” He said that he was also considering other actions against the Getty, hinting that he had reached out to his former employer Imhotep for assistance. When Rogan asked if he had any regrets after losing his gig at what is widely considered one of the finest private museums in the world, Beni said, “It is better to be the Devil’s right hand than in his path.” Though the reply made absolutely no sense as a response to the question, Rogan nodded his head and said that Beni was absolutely right and hoped others out there would follow the Devil’s lead.

During much of the episode, the two shared what appeared to be a joint, though Beni appeared not to be inhaling. As the podcast came to a close, Rogan asked Beni whether his last day at the Getty was anything like his last day at the pyramid. Beni said that after being told he had been terminated, he collected his things—and some of the Getty’s—before successfully escaping the building in the middle of the night, telling the security guard, “Goodbye, my friend.” He said the guard replied, “Goodbye, Beni.”

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Hy Kek, 19, a Cambodian American, was considered a rising star in the tae kwon do world but was the definite underdog against the defending champion, a South Korean known as “‘Big Kim.” The match was tied and was in the final “golden point round,” where the first person to score wins. Although the older, vastly more experienced Big Kim clearly had a leg up over his younger, overachieving opponent in the decisive tie-breaker, nobody could have guessed that the leg giving him the advantage—and ultimately, the win—would belong to his opponent. Some at the tournament recalled that Kek had figuratively put his foot in his mouth moments before he literally did so when he yelled that Big Kim was a disgrace to the sport because Kim, who is bigger and heavier and less flexible than a prototypical tae kwon do champion, had difficulty kicking above his head. Then, as if trying to prove his point, Kek launched the ax kick that ended up hitting Kek square in his own face.

A tournament judge said that in the seconds after Kek hit the floor, the arena was hushed as the stunned spectators and staff did not know what to make of what they had just seen. She said even the tournament doctor, a 22-year veteran of the fight scene, wasn’t sure what had happened. “I’ve seen refs and even a spectator knocked out,” the judge said, “but never this. The really bizarre thing is that we weren’t even sure who’d won. Head kicks are worth three points, so technically Kek had just scored, which under pretty much any other circumstances would’ve made him the winner. But then he was also lying face down on the mat, out cold. We even kicked around the idea of declaring him both the winner and the loser.” She said that in the end they kicked the decision up to the president of the Global Taekwondo Federation, who was in the audience, and the president declared Kim the winner.

Kek regained consciousness within a few minutes and did not sustain any serious injuries. When he awoke, he received a standing ovation from the still shocked but relieved crowd. Some spectators said that Kek actually seemed to get a kick from the whole incident, even clapping for himself. And though he may never live down what happened, he may have also left an indelible—if unintentional—mark, in the shape of his footprint, on the sport: The International Olympic Committee is reportedly considering a new tae kwon do event in which competitors fight themselves.

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