Dana White says he contracted COVID-19 over Thanksgiving, and that he is taking advice on how to tackle it from Joe Rogan.
The UFC president, speaking on Jim Rome’s podcast, said that he and his family spent the Thanksgiving holiday in Maine. When they returned, he said that “literally” his whole family tested positive for COVID-19.
White, 52, said he does a daily cold plunge and steam, and in this routine on Sunday he realized he did not have his sense of smell.
“I get out of the cold plunge and I get in the steam, and I spray the eucalyptus and I couldn’t smell anything,” White said, according to the website MMA Fighting. “So I open the bottle, I start sniffing the bottle of eucalyptus, and I’m like yeah, I got no smell. So you know what this means. I literally got out of the steam, picked up my phone and called Joe Rogan.”
Rogan, who hosts a widely popular podcast on Spotify and is a broadcaster for UFC, has been a lightning rod throughout the COVID-19 saga. The brouhaha around Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers’ vaccination status included controversy over him saying he was receiving COVID-19 recovery advice from Rogan.
Rogan, 54, has said that he is not vaccinated, and that he has taken the drug ivermectin and received monoclonal antibodies. In October, Rogan argued with CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta over the physician referring to ivermectin as a “horse dewormer” when there is a version of the drug produced for humans.
Nevertheless, the FDA has said that it has not “approved or authorized” taking ivermectin to treat COVID-19. Ivermectin, the FDA says, is “approved for human use to treat infections caused by some parasitic worms and head lice and skin conditions like rosacea.”
“Listen, I’m vaccinated,” White said. “It’s not like I’m some crazy anti-vax conspiracy theorist or some of that stuff but Rogan is a very brilliant guy. Very smart guy who talks to the best and the brightest out there and I’m not a believer in the narrative. But at the end of the day, this is a free country. Cause what happens when you get this stuff, they tell you stay home for the next 10 days until you don’t test positive. That doesn’t seem smart to me. Just like when we went through COVID, I believe in finding solutions to problems and answers.”
White was referring to evading COVID-19 lockdowns in America by staging events in Abu Dhabi at a venue the UFC referred to as “Fight Island” from July 2020 to October 2021.
White continued to explain how he is listening to Rogan’s advice for treating COVID-19, and hopes to recover and test negatively in time to be in attendance for UFC Vegas 44 on Saturday.
“Rogan has worked with over 30 or 40 people that have done this and he swears by it, and he’s a good friend of mine that I’ve known for over 20 years. So yeah, I believe in what he’s saying. I believe the way he explained to me on how this thing works made sense to me,” White said.
“I’m attacking this thing with the methods that Rogan has learned from very smart people. I’m going to keep testing every two days until I’m negative and then I’m going to get back to work ASAP. I hope [I’ll be at UFC Vegas 44]. If I test negative, then absolutely positively I’ll be there. I’m going to do the exact protocol that’s supposed to be done to make sure I’m clean and can go and be around people again. As soon as that’s 100 percent clear, then I’ll be back to work.”