“You’ve evidently want to propagate a red herring that masks work well.”
Not a red herring at all. Consider:
“Cloth face coverings are one of the most powerful weapons we have to slow and stop the spread of the virus.” - CDC Director Robert Redfield
In fact, the demands for universal mask wearing is based on the idea that masks work much more than “marginally well”. You don’t make something mandatory everywhere, with fines for non-compliance, if you don’t believe they work significantly well.
“I think the data you are presenting has too many confounding factors be useful. For example even after masks were mandatory on June 18th, people went to bars until July 1st.”
Yeah, because such a huge percentage of people spend time in bars that continuing bar use means cases will GREATLY EXPAND. Please note, I’m asking for evidence they CUT cases. But the reality is cases are continuing to explode upwards in California, even after the restriction on bars.
When cases continue to accelerate, it calls into question the efficacy of ANY and ALL of the applied control measures. It isn’t as if California has flattened the curve even. And to the extent masks help, it should be evident within 10 days. By the end of June.
The bars were open before and after the mask mandate was put in place, and masks didn’t change the curve. Neither has the bar restriction, which calls into question if it is helpful as well. At some point, when politicians impose restrictions and cases continue to grow rapidly, the success of those measures needs to be examined.
I think you are missing the effect of the lockdown. There is much more traffic in Calfornia now compared to the April lockdown. That's partly because people are ignoring the lockdown and more restrictions were loosened. Then Newsom tightened some more on July 13th and there's some lag to see the effects.
To figure out whether a given mandate has an effect, you need a lot more data due to the dynamics of the situation. Family gatherings might be a cause, so you would look at the data and see if there's household spread (no masks in that case). Or look for office spread in some of the reopened offices (masks would be in use in that case). Pay special attention to the demographics. If younger people are getting hit there's less chance that they were wearing masks.
In short, you need a lot more data to make a conclusion, and since masks don't work very well, don't expect a lot of signal compared to noise.