Featured Image Credit: Kevin Dietsch / Staff / Getty
Elon Musk has been over a variety of news facets in recent weeks from DOGE cuts to delivering a very hard truth to dedicated meme coin investors, and is now bringing COVID vaccination controversy as well.
Specifically, this has stemmed from the tech billionaire’s reaction to a shared clip from The Joe Rogan Experience podcast. This wasn’t one of the latest episodes featuring the return of the Tesla CEO himself on the show, but of Vice President JD Vance.
Vance appeared on episode 2221 of Rogan’s podcast, which was uploaded to YouTube on October 31 ahead of the 2024 Presidential elections. Just after the 66-minute mark, the at-the-time vice presidential candidate and Rogan got onto the subject of side effects from Covid vaccinations.
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Talking about his own experience, Vance said: “I took the vax and — I haven’t been boosted or anything — but the moment where I really started to get red-pilled on the whole vax thing, was [when I was] the sickest that I have been in the last 15 years by far was when I took the vaccine. And I, you know, I’ve had COVID at this point five times. I was in bed for two days. My heart was racing”.
Vance added: “Even the fact that we’re not allowed to talk about the fact that I was as sick as I’ve ever been for two days, and the worst Covid experience I had was like a sinus infection. I’m not really willing to trade that. And you don’t even, you know, everybody that I know, or a lot of people I know, they talk about the second shot that they got of the vaccine was really- that made them really, really sick. Well, that’s a side effect and not a side effect that we even talk about enough in this country”.
Once Elon Musk noticed a clip of this particular moment being shared on X (formerly Twitter), he reposted it while claiming he almost had to go to the hospital.
I had a similar experience.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 19, 2025
Covid itself was nothing. I got the OG Wuhan strain before vaccines were out.
J&J vaccine hurt my arm, but otherwise nothing.
But the mRNA booster hit extremely hard. Massive chest pain. Felt like I got hit by a truck. Almost went to hospital.… https://t.co/MUfj5H03on
Although the face of DOGE also states that the mRNA booster vaccine he got resulted in “massive chest pain”, research should continue with its potential for applications in cancer treatments.
As stated on the relevant section of the World Health Organization website, mild-to-moderate side effects of these vaccinations — like pain at the site of injection, fever, and chills — are normal and will usually last a few days before going away on their own, as it seemed to do so for Vance.
The WHO also states while it’s normal to go through Covid vaccinations without side effects, a reason for them occurring is that your immune system is instructing the body to kill the virus — eventually giving you immunity once symptoms have dissipated.
While the COVID-19 pandemic is over, divided opinions over its vaccinations will seem to continue for some time.
