...except that my post utterly and completely demolishes the claim that "COVID rises in the summer."
And I am not making the claim that we're seeing massive surges anywhere in the US right now.
Try not to cherry pick, mmkay?
Nope, just one. The data is quite clear that your "indoor" theory doesn't hold -- unless you believe that Idaho, Washington State and Oregon are scorching in the summer, and Illinois, Maryland and Virginia are not.
And again... We aren't seeing huge leaps in cases, despite states relaxing restrictions, and both Western and Southwestern states getting nailed with a massive heat wave. It's clear that the vaccine is significantly slowing the spread of COVID, even in states with lower vaccination rates.
And even that one may not be anywhere near as important as factors such as social distancing, vaccination rate, replication rate of specific variants, and so on. E.g. "people staying indoors" doesn't spread the virus, except when people start to associate with large groups indoors.
Whatever, dude. Nothing in my post cited the media.
I'm sure your sudden realization that you were assisting my argument upset your equilibrium, but it remains that my position has been yours...we aren't seeing any significant surges at all among low vaccinated (or other) states. The OP, of course, claims otherwise...comrade!
Nor do I believe that COVID must rise in summer. But I do believe that COVID has had a tendency to rise is summer in those states where people are driven from outdoors to indoors under AC (as compared to winter), all other things being equal. This tendency is but one of many contributing factors that may, or may not, cause a minor surge in cases this summer.
And yes, I agree, it may or may not mitigated by social distancing, vaccination totals, or variants. But "people staying indoors" compared to outdoors does spread the virus - read the literature (or note the experience of NY where 2/3rds of their infections were caught at home). Regardless of size of home (family to nursing homes) or public facilities the virus vector of transmission of almost entirely indoors is undisputed.
What is particularly bemusing is that the dread of agreeing on this point is utterly driven by the partisan terror of finding agreement with someone on the right - so much so it has created incoherent denial on what is commonly thought.
You see, I'm not relying on anti-vaxxers or Trumpers ... I read LIBERAL left trusted sources. YEP NATE SILVER and VOX. Not only has Silver run regressions on this correlations but VOX publishes it as a public concern on msn:
But experts are increasingly worried that, in the southern half of the country, the return to normalcy could be a mirage and that summer could bring another wave of the virus in parts of the country. “I’m definitely worried,” Saskia Popescu, an epidemiologist at George Mason University, told me.
The concern isn’t about another nationwide surge, but potential state or local spikes. That’s because southern states, including much of the Sun Belt and especially the Deep South, face three distinct disadvantages this summer that other parts of the country don’t.
One of those disadvantages are lower vaccination rates, another is southerners being less willing to social distance, and the last is that of SOUTHERN SUMMERS and its effect on driving people indoors (got that?).
2) Higher temperatures: While the summer brings outdoor activities for northern parts of the US, it can do the opposite for southern states. As the heat climbs past the 90s and into the 100s, people tend to go into air-conditioned or at least closed-off indoor areas. That’s bad news for the spread of Covid-19, since the virus has a much easier time spreading in indoor, poorly ventilated spaces. This seemed to lead to more spread in the Sun Belt last summer.
“I don’t think people understand how hard it is to be outside in the summer here,” Popescu, who lives in Arizona, said. “Even late at night, it’s like 100 degrees in the summer. So it’s not easy to tell people to go outside. And it’s really hard for businesses, especially restaurants and bars, to keep the doors open, the windows open — it’s like opening the oven door when you’re baking cookies, you get that blast of heat.”...Put these three factors together, and it’s possible that southern states could see a repeat of last summer, when Covid-19 cases at first hit low levels then surged.
So as I said and will repeat until the mace of reason pounds it home...
"Therefore, as last year, it would not be surprising where those same states will bump a little higher - ALTHOUGH there is no proof that has done so, so far."
