Cases are skyrocketing everywhere. While your statement is true, it's extremely misleading.

Oregon is 47th place in terms of population adjusted total cases. In terms of number of absolute new cases, Oregon is 40th. Every state with fewer absolute new cases than Oregon is smaller with the exception of Lousiana. Oregon has done a fantastic job of handling Covid.

(1) https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/ .

It isn’t misleading in any way: the parent was talking about mask rules in Oregon, asserting that they make all the difference. Yet cases are going up, all over Oregon, and especially in the places with the most compliance.

The fact that cases are going up all over the northern hemisphere - in places both with mask rules and without - should tell you something very important about the effectiveness of those rules.

I'm not sure why you're being purposely ignorant. Rules in Oregon have been relatively more strict so Oregon has had relatively fewer cases. Oregon lifted restrictions, opening up dining & gyms for example leading to an increase in cases. As a response, Oregon has reentered a lockdown.

What's so complicated?

How civil.

Oregon’s restrictions were no more or less strict than, say, New York City. In New York, gyms are open, dining is open.

New York is currently at 20 per 100k cases per day. Portland is at 100 per 100k. I suppose this means that New York is masking harder?

What’s so complicated?

Oregon still seems to be doing relatively better.

https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#cases_casesper100k...

Much of it is due to private gatherings without masks, gyms, and maybe bars and restaurants.

From what I can tell (I'm just staying home), people maybe did backyard gatherings when it was nice enough out, but moved indoors and that's gotten a lot of people sick.

> Much of it is due to private gatherings without masks, gyms, and maybe bars and restaurants.

Prove it.

When cases go down, it’s because of masks. When they go up in the same place, it’s because people suddenly stopped wearing them, but no proof is provided for either assertion.

I think we can all agree (and I don't have to prove) that if nobody would ever meet anyone outside their home there would be 0 infections. So that would be the ideal. We could have states just mandate very strict shelter in place. Would you like that?

Probably not, in which case we have to allow people to get outside their homes. When we do that we come up with rules to try to minimize infection rates, distance and mask wearing is supposed to help with that. Is your argument that mask wearing has 0 impact on COVID19 spreading rate?

This article seems to go over a number of studies showing correlation between mask wearing and lower death rates: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02801-8

But if mask wearing isn't helping at all with infectious diseases like COVID19, why are health experts always wearing them? It's a lot more comfortable to not be wearing any mask so they could do that instead. They'd have the data and the skills to determine if it helps or not, much better than we would.

> I think we can all agree (and I don't have to prove) that if nobody would ever meet anyone outside their home there would be 0 infections. So that would be the ideal. We could have states just mandate very strict shelter in place. Would you like that?

Absolutely. If we were really serious about beating the virus, that's exactly what we would do: Real and strictly enforced stay-at home, and mask wearing for exceptional cases when you had to go out. Coordinated nationally so we didn't have this healthy state - sick state problem. Then stick with it until it succeeded. It would be temporarily economically painful, and people would complain about their freedom to get their nails done and eat at Olive Garden, but we'd get the public health benefit and come out the other side not-dead.

Instead, we managed to do an even worse thing: Announce half-assed "business closures" and stay-at-home orders (more like suggestions), uncoordinated with other states, and unenforced, which gave us the negative economic effects and did not provide the health benefit. To top it off, we opened up way too early, causing this yo-yo effect where cases predictably spike after re-opening, causing re-closing, then a rush to re-open because economy, then another spike, then an inevitable re-close, and on and on.

Unless the vaccines pan out, we're going to be in this exact situation a year from now. Constantly re-opening, faking surprise at the cases spiking, and then re-closing.

It is a lot more comfortable to not be wearing any mask, that's why health experts like Dr. Fauci wear them only in front of the cameras but take them off when they think the cameras are off.

This is what https://www.oregon.gov/oha/Pages/index.aspx and our county health program here in Deschutes county are saying. They seem pretty reliable and objective.

I think we can pretty safely conclude that any data saying blue cities have it worse than bumfuck nowhere towns must be misleading or manipulated. It just doesn't line up with what we know about education levels and compliance levels.

There are more total cases in Portland because of the population numbers. From what I recall, the per capita numbers bounce around, with rural counties going through outbreaks occasionally taking the lead. There was a church in La Grande that had a big one in late spring. Sure put the lie to the notion that it was "density" and a "city problem".

San Francisco is the second densest city in America. San Francisco has the lowest COVID transmission rates of any city, with recently a positive test rate under 1%. Masks matter.

San Francisco has imposed unrelenting, draconian business closures for most of 2020, and only barely allowed re-opening of a few classes of business in late summer before closing them again in the fall. The city has seen a mass exodus amongst the worst in the nation.

And yet, despite all of this, and despite some of the strictest mask rules in the world, and the highest rates of compliance...cases have almost quadrupled since mid-October:

https://covid-19.direct/county/CA/San%20Francisco

But sure, none of that matters: if cases go down, it’s because masks. If they go up, it’s because someone didn’t wear their mask right. There can be no other explanation.

I wonder if cities having a high proportion of knowledge workers that are all able to work from home has a big impact too. The less people gather in groups, the better.

The graphs I linked use the Covid Tracking Project API. The data is not manipulated in any way.

Blue cities are denser than outlying red areas. Density means more opportunities for transmission. All else being equal, they would see higher transmission and per-capita infection rates.

The fact that we see the opposite is unfortunate and unnecessary.