Thread by @chrisvanderveen

Mask mandates

Do they work?

I think they do. A little.

But a lot?

Well, let's take a look at 3 Colorado counties.
Douglas, Adams, Arapahoe.

Two adopted mask mandates in late Nov. One didn't.
So.. what's happened since then?

Let's look at hospitalizations.

Douglas County (in a much publicized move) elected not to go forward with mask mandates

Arapahoe/Adams

(like Denver)

elected to move forward with them (only dissolved last week)

So... how did everyone do?

W/Hospitalizations?

Well... Similar falls and rises (Douglas was a little lower over last 2 months)

Incidence rates?

Notice a trend here during last 28 days?

Positivity?

So what about kids?

Remember Douglas County schools. It dropped mask mandates in December.

9news.com/article/news/l…

Interestingly enough... this is where Douglas County turned out to do worse that the other two counties

Let's look at this chart.

Adams=Red
Arap=Blue
Douglas=Yellow

In 0-5, 6-11 and 12-17.. kids in DougCo fared worse in case incidence rates in early January

What's also interesting is that once you get to 18+...

DougCo fares better.

(look at black arrows)

What does this all mean?

Well, it's a very raw look at the data... and I wouldn't recommend jumping to too many conclusions.

But masks did not allow ArapCo and AdCo to do much better than DougCo.

But maybe they had a slight impact in schools?

I'm open to thoughts here. This is clearly a VERY QUICK analysis.

But it's also a reminder that even counties with mask mandates didn't fare too well against Omicron

Most counties just rose (and then fell) in unison.

FIN

One more thing...

Cuz this always happens when I do something like this

This is NOT an anti-mask screed.

As I have said, for months, mandates are only as good as the enforcement mechanism

and during last few months... that mechanism relied heavily on employees.

Which, in turn, made enforcement awkward at best.

We may very well need to reconsider mask mandates in the future should another variant emerge.

But we darn well better come up with a way to enforce w/o relying on employees alone.

Otherwise, we'll get same result.