The supposed "actual evidence" is what we are arguing about right now.

At the end of May, the places that would institute a mask mandate two months later fell below the other places. Then they stayed below the other places. Attributing that to the mandates is bordering on absurdity. We aren't talking about a week. We're talking about two months. That's long before people are preparing for a mandate that nobody is even considering yet.

You might as well say, "Places that will eventually have mask mandates have higher infection rates two months prior to the mandates."

I don’t think anyone was suggesting that, the masked line was above the masked line in the article but that’s summing data across multiple sources and mask mandates that took place at different times.

Look at the underlying data for each mandate in the state and things become much more obvious.