I think the simple answer is seasonality.

Coronavirus is a cold virus. If you look at the spikes nationally they have corresponded with winter colds season and summer colds seasons. Same in Texas.

I haven't seen any data on Michigan but Texas was pretty much spot on when it hits us each year. I suspect we'll see an uptick in the July timeframe but hopefully the vaccines short circuit it.

Seasonality is why all there "controls" are useless IMO.

Per the link above, Deaths per day have "spiked" from 20 d/d to 40 d/d.

Not clear why this warrants a massive policy change.

I think the seasonality explanation is almost as overhyped as the public policy explanations. At this point we still don't have a damn clue on how this virus acts on the population level.

On the individual level it's easy to avoid, or if you haven't pretty easy to see how you caught it. But translating that to the large scale is a continuing worldwide failure (unless you are an island, or can literally lock millions of people in their houses for months whenever you want)

Yeah, it's just crazy to see people from Oregon, New York, New Jersey, etc., post on facebook and how different they think than the average person I talk with here. Some are truly frightened. Even most texans I know who were pro social distancing and masks aren't frightened as an individual.

And yet, through it all, numbers were pretty even throughout most states. some more draconian states looking to fair better, some not as much. And vice versa with states that had less restrictions. no doubt about it, I'm glad I lived in texas versus just about any other state throughout this, other than maybe Florida.

Squadron7 said:

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My guess is then when you lock down you inhibit the spread through the less vulnerable elements of the population which enables them to spread the virus later on.

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I think there's definitely some of this, too.

It wouldn't shock me if Michigan's younger population has less immunity than our younger population that we built up throughout the last year.

BCG Disciple said:

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Is heard immunity, or lack thereof as a result of lockdowns, a potential factor?

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Deafinitely.

Sorry, I had to do it.

Now go read some comments from people in other countries. It's even worse. It's a wonder if this ever ends, at least in other countries, because some people have been so brainwashed into believing they are mere seconds away from dying at any time.

We have lost all sense of relative risk in the last year. Never have we ever had a daily tracker for a single death publicized like this. It's absolutely terrible for the future of humanity, IMHO.

And the Texas population has increased throughout all of this. People are treating this like an extinction level event if we don't do everything completely right. A year into this. I'm truly amazed at how we are still where we are, and more people haven't discovered relative risk and just refused to be locked up, etc. It's less than 1% of the top 1% of the world telling the other 99.9999% how to live.

beerad12man said:

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Now go read some comments from people in other countries. It's even worse. It's a wonder if this ever ends, at least in other countries, because some people have been so brainwashed into believing they are mere seconds away from dying at any time.

We have lost all sense of relative risk in the last year. Never have we ever had a daily tracker for a single death publicized like this. It's absolutely terrible for the future of humanity, IMHO.

And the Texas population has increased throughout all of this. People are treating this like an extinction level event if we don't do everything completely right. A year into this. I'm truly amazed at how we are still where we are, and more people haven't discovered relative risk and just refused to be locked up, etc. It's less than 1% of the top 1% of the world telling the other 99.9999% how to live.

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It's about pulling off the band aid. For many in TX, they were apprehensive through the Summer but as they watched more and more of their friends and neighbors go out, they became more comfortable to the idea and eventually got out as well. Some question TX's strategy of opening as much as we did early on, but it truly appears we did the right thing as any spikes we had most likely would have happened anyway given the amount of spikes in the most locked down states at the worst of it. It really was a situation where there was going to be a spike regardless of whether the state locked down or not.

The country needs to open up even more. There's no doubt in my mind. Too many around the country are fine with laying low and that's just not healthy. The band aid needs to be ripped off everywhere. The discomfort many will feel at first will subside and in it's place will be a much more healthy ability to get on with life they way it was intended to be. Sometimes this kind of thing needs to be forced on people. If not forced, at least, as TX did a month and a half ago, open it all up 100%, make individual businesses have to enforce their own policies moving forward so that eventually they will see that the enforcement is too taxing to do while also being able to perform their normal business duties. Encourage people to be out, spend money, socialize and get back to normal. Especially the vaccinated. The vaccinated are safe and won't spread the virus to any noticeable level. Will some catch Covid? Yes. But as long as its much more rare the amount of positive cases do not overwhelm the hospital system, that is totally acceptable and needs to be. Life will always have risks. Again, the ONLY reason to shut down, have limits and restrictions, masks etc was to keep the hospitals from being overwhelmed. Once that isn't the issue, we must get back to a complete old normal. If things start to shift in policy to a point where we are trying to completely eradicate the virus so that there are no positive cases period, than we are doing things very wrong.

Capitol Ag said:

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beerad12man said:

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Now go read some comments from people in other countries. It's even worse. It's a wonder if this ever ends, at least in other countries, because some people have been so brainwashed into believing they are mere seconds away from dying at any time.

We have lost all sense of relative risk in the last year. Never have we ever had a daily tracker for a single death publicized like this. It's absolutely terrible for the future of humanity, IMHO.

And the Texas population has increased throughout all of this. People are treating this like an extinction level event if we don't do everything completely right. A year into this. I'm truly amazed at how we are still where we are, and more people haven't discovered relative risk and just refused to be locked up, etc. It's less than 1% of the top 1% of the world telling the other 99.9999% how to live.

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It's about pulling off the band aid. For many in TX, they were apprehensive through the Summer but as they watched more and more of their friends and neighbors go out, they became more comfortable to the idea and eventually got out as well. Some question TX's strategy of opening as much as we did early on, but it truly appears we did the right thing as any spikes we had most likely would have happened anyway given the amount of spikes in the most locked down states at the worst of it. It really was a situation where there was going to be a spike regardless of whether the state locked down or not.

The country needs to open up even more. There's no doubt in my mind. Too many around the country are fine with laying low and that's just not healthy. The band aid needs to be ripped off everywhere. The discomfort many will feel at first will subside and in it's place will be a much more healthy ability to get on with life they way it was intended to be. Sometimes this kind of thing needs to be forced on people. If not forced, at least, as TX did a month and a half ago, open it all up 100%, make individual businesses have to enforce their own policies moving forward so that eventually they will see that the enforcement is too taxing to do while also being able to perform their normal business duties. Encourage people to be out, spend money, socialize and get back to normal. Especially the vaccinated. The vaccinated are safe and won't spread the virus to any noticeable level. Will some catch Covid? Yes. But as long as its much more rare the amount of positive cases do not overwhelm the hospital system, that is totally acceptable and needs to be. Life will always have risks. Again, the ONLY reason to shut down, have limits and restrictions, masks etc was to keep the hospitals from being overwhelmed. Once that isn't the issue, we must get back to a complete old normal. If things start to shift in policy to a point where we are trying to completely eradicate the virus so that there are no positive cases period, than we are doing things very wrong.

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Im in this camp.

There has to be an end in sight. To me (and it seems for science), the vaccine is that goal. Once you hit the level of "if any adult wants a vaccine they can get one" then you have to rip the bandaid off and go for it.

None of this whole "look at the variants!" bull sheet. If the vaccine is wholly uneffective against that, then that is a different conversation. But it looks like there is a pretty good level of protection there.

There has to be a bright line drawn where we all collectively say "we are okay with this."