Mmmm You can see the timeline of orders that were put into place and the correlation. Here is Florida https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/state-timeline/new-confirme.... No mask mandate at all. Disney world is open. Beaches are open. The only order was bars are shut down. Without other distancing or masks, it's hard to believe that would stop spread.
Beaches are outdoors and while they make look crowded, people often maintain more than 6 feet between each other at the beach anyway.
The numbers are going down in Florida because people finally got a taste of how serious it is and changed their behavior.
The fact that you keep downplaying behavioral changes and completely ignoring other changes like people working from home and schools being out shows you are wedded to your conclusion. Unfortunately, it is fundamentally flawed.
You've made a extraordinary claim, the onus is on you to back it up with extraordinary evidence. A couple graphs of new cases going down and a photo of a boardwalk (where nearly everyone is in a mask) is not sufficient to support your claim.
Your observations are quite subjective and flawed. Yes, Disney world is open, that is hardly the end of it. Is it the same Disney World as before the pandemic? It’s not a binary situation. You can’t just point out that because a place is now open, instead of closed, therefore there are no precautions being taken. We can be debate whether they are taking enough precautions, but you can’t just use this the way you have in this article.
This whole article is just a gut check without real evidence.
In just this list, we're up to mask mandates that cover counties that account for 10 million people, 47% of Florida's population, and accounting for the densest population centers. A number of additional counties also enacted mask mandates, but it got a bit tedious listing them all out.
In other words, in the June-July period, mask mandates were enacted for a majority of the population of Florida.
In another comment, I critiqued this piece as being a shallow analysis. Your comment here is an example of that.
I also took a roadtrip across the northeast a month ago so I saw a lot of how careful people were being. Ocean City, NJ was packed and almost no one was wearing masks. The upper east side was packed in NYC. I got a chicken sandwich at an indoor take out place where the guy serving me had one glove on and gave me the sandwich with the hand without the glove. Central park was full of people not wearing masks. Fireworks and protests all night. The argument that people are taking this seriously is just not true in NY and NJ. I can't imagine Florida is better than that.
I agree that i haven't quantified how careful people are being though. There has to be a way to do this. I know there was some drone plan to see how many masks were being worn in parts of the country. It might be worth getting some numbers for this.
And even if mask laws are lifted and infection rates continue going down, it does not show that masks are ineffective nor that the OP was correct. After a mask mandate, some people will continue wearing masks and social distancing. As with immunity, the efficacy is in the numbers, with a critical mass necessary to protect the "herd".
So this is a good point. I was just talking with a colleague about this. Some of the herd immunity models take factors like how mobile people are into account. It seems like masks could be a factor in the models of herd immunity. This might be a semantic argument. If population characteristics such as age are part of herd immunity (which is a moving target depending on population), then mask wearing could be considered a population characteristic and included in the model. This would net "drop" herd immunity levels.
The distinction comes down to factors that change (behaviors, mandates, regulations, etc.) and those that don't (age, gender, etc.).
Saying we've reached herd immunity given behavioral changes is largely meaningless, as most people do not want to continue these behavioral changes indefinitely. One of the biggest changes that you failed to acknowledge is that people are not in contact with nearly as many people in their day to day life as they were before. Working from home, kids not in school, limited social interactions, etc.
It's not herd immunity if a return to previous behaviors negates the immunity.
What's going to be interesting is: after coronavirus is over and we're down to non pandemic levels of infections in the states, restrictions are lifted, and people start going about their pre-pandemic business, I wonder what the explanation will be as to why there's a permanent immunity.
How long will people continue to flog the 'people are continuing to be responsible' horse?
What will it take to finally accept that there's a physiological immunity taking place giving herd immunity?
Behavior is a variable that can and should be included in a herd immunity model. The percent immunity needed to achieve Herd immunity will change with behavior. That doesn't negate that it's happening. Louisiana and Florida are pretty much open and seeing a drop in cases. Bars aren't open indoors- but I think we can live with that for a little while?
