The US is a big place. What's the vaccination rate in Alabama, for example? In a country that size, if you have large areas with low uptakes it is as bad as a smaller country having an overall lower rate. It doesn't matter if New York has a 99% vaccination rate, they can't share beds or patients with Alabama even if the statistics do get bundled together. So you do need to address why those regions have low vaccine uptake and Joe Rogan will definitely be one of the reasons.
Alabama is an interesting case. Apparently only 49.4% of all age groups of the state's population have been fully vaccinated. 61.2%, however, have had at least one dose. According to a study in the U.K. up to 96.79% of people have developed antibodies after the first vaccine. So maybe we could consider the 61.2% of partially vaccinated Alabama citizens as quite safe against the virus. I haven't yet looked into the most recent infection and death rates but it would be interesting to find out whether this is one of the reasons the partially vaccinated are deciding not to go for the second dose.
Furthermore, Alabama has one of the least vaccinated children aged 5-11. I'm not sure where I stand on vaccination of children, to be honest, as that is not something that's pushed in the U.K. Vaccination for children aged 5-11 is recommended only to those children who are in a clinical risk group or who live with someone who is in immunosuppressed. I've not yet looked into the possibility that the reason Alabama's low vaccination rate is influenced by the fact that it has the smallest share of vaccinated 5-11 year olds, and that the reason for this is that not every single 5-11 year old should be required or expected to be vaccinated in the first place. So how does this whole thing influence the numbers.
Furthermore, it seems that in the last election 89% of Black voters votes for Biden and only 11% for Trump. Regarding white voters, the majority voted for Trump (74%), and only 23% for Biden. Does this play a role in the attitude toward the vaccination program? The data suggests that the vast majority of partially and fully vaccinated people are White - but they're majority Republican. Wouldn't you expect that this racial group would be more influenced by Fox News and Joe Rogan and that their vaccination numbers would be lower than those of the Democrat voting population?
I don't know. I'm trying to research some more numbers as it seems a bit complex. You said that
Joe Rogan is definitely one of the reasons. It would be interesting to examine your claim empirically and, if possible, quantify to the best of our abilities what percentage of people have actually been influenced by Rogan's podcast in their decision to refuse to be vaccinated.