Biden officials call out Joe Rogan over vaccine comments: 'Did Joe Rogan become a medical doctor while we weren't looking?'

• Two White House officials criticized Joe Rogan Wednesday over his recent vaccine comments.
• Rogan said healthy young people didn't need the vaccine, even though they can spread the virus.
• Hospitalizations among younger Americans have increased as older people have gotten the shot.

The podcast mogul Joe Rogan took heat from a pair of White House officials on Wednesday over his opinion that younger Americans shouldn't get the COVID-19 vaccine.

Rogan speculated about whether the vaccine was worth it for young people on an episode of "The Joe Rogan Experience" released Tuesday.

"But if you're like 21 years old, and you say to me, 'Should I get vaccinated?' I'll go, 'No,'" Rogan said.

"If you're a healthy person, and you're exercising all the time, and you're young, and you're eating well, like, I don't think you need to worry about this," he added.

Rogan said he was not against vaccines in general, but he didn't mention that the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said hospitalizations among young people were up. And in Michigan, hospitals' COVID-19 units are packed with younger people, The New York Times reported.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, President Joe Biden's chief medical advisor and the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, criticized the celebrity's remarks in an interview on CNN Wednesday morning.

"So you have to put a little bit of societal responsibility in your choices, and that's why I disagree with Mr. Rogan under that circumstance," Fauci said of Rogan's influence on his audience, which is mostly male with an average age of 24, a Media Monitors survey indicated.

Kate Bedingfield, Biden's communications director, also criticized Rogan in an earlier interview Wednesday on CNN.

"I guess my first question would be, 'Did Joe Rogan become a medical doctor while we weren't looking?'" Bedingfield said.

"I'm not sure that taking scientific and medical advice from Joe Rogan is perhaps the most productive way for people to get their information," she added.