This study of actual transmission seems to indicate a substantial reduction in transmission from vaccinated people. But that benefit also seems to fade. I don’t know if the fading is real or how much is from confounding effects (like more and more “unvaccinated” having immunity from prior infection). Someone with more experience in these types of studies than I could dig into that.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.09.28.21264260v1
I found the Rogan episode with Gupta (and especially the one with Berenson) was painful. I had to stop listening and I don’t think I’ll listen to Rogan anymore. When I know the details of the studies that Rogan throws around I get really frustrated with his lack of really deep understanding of the science. He is quick and smart, but his lack of depth leads him far astray when it comes to complex things like vaccines and medical science.
For example, he kept telling Gupta about the Hoeg myocarditis preprint (https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.30.21262866v1) and repeatedly read from a news story about it that boys are more likely to get myocarditis from the vaccine than to get hospitalized by covid. But this misunderstands that the preprint was comparing vaccine risk to covid risk *assuming you had a fairly low chance of getting covid in the first place*. It wasn’t comparing vaccine risk to covid risk conditional on actually getting covid.
Gupta really stumbled and neither made the point that all kids are likely to eventually be exposed to the virus now that it is likely to become endemic, so the net risks from the disease are much higher than the Hoeg preprint estimates, nor did he flesh out that hospitalizations that result from covid are likely to more dangerous than myocarditis, which is often easily treatable.
The Berenson episode was this times a million. Most of the data they showed was “real,” but completely lacking context and depth/understanding to the point of being misinformation. It really reminds me of the numbers games (wrong denominator, failing to compare to other risks, failing to balance risk of an action/policy with risk of the alternatives) Berenson used to fight against when they were coming from covid fearmongers. Now he’s using identical tactics to spread fear about the vaccines.
I wish folks would point out to Rogan that he applies a different standard to vaccines (they must be proven totally safe over decades of testing) than he does to other medications and natural remedies. How can he know that Ivermectin won’t just cause SARS-CoV-2 to go dormant in people’s spinal columns for a decade only to reemerge to kill them? Vaccines hold a special fear in our collective psyche, because we’ve all been exposed to decades of anti-vaxx propaganda. Even those of us very pro-vaxx can’t help falling prey to the emotional fear of jabbing our kids.