Earlier quoted context omitted.
> He's completely ignoring all other reasons why infection might go down, the most important one being effective countermeasures, like wearing masks and social distancing. If those measures are so effective, why did they take nearly a year for an effect to be seen?
I agree, cases are falling so fast and so dramatically in Texas that it looks like a data error. I see no way masks and social distancing resulted in the drop off happening now. We're at levels not seen since the mins in Sept/Oct which outruns the holiday wave. I can't make heads or tails of it. https://apps.texastribune.org/features/2020/texas-coronaviru... edit: the past weather has certainly had an effect on testi…
* The WHO updated their guidelines for PCR tests in a way that could cause this (because the tests were being misused, the new guidelines clarify how they're supposed to be used in a way the previous ones did not), except the update also happened after the drop started.
* The drop is worldwide, it seems like only a handful of countries aren't experiencing it. In most places it started at various parts of January, but here in Illinois it started in November (minus spikes that correlate to Thanksgiving/Christmas/New Years).
* There is no correlation in the US between "lockdown states" and "reopened states". It's just dropping everywhere.
My personal belief: We already hit herd immunity in most of the world a month ago. There's a few possibilities for why this would be (underestimating cross-immunity or how far the virus has spread, for example), but it's really hard to say for sure.