I’ve worked with numbers all my adult life. Right around the time that these governors started implementing this crap, the actual case numbers reached what is known as an inflection point. This means that the day to day increase in cases became smaller with each passing day, rather than larger. This doesn’t mean that the actual number is declining (but that’s coming) but rather than today’s number minus yesterday’s is smaller than yesterday’s minus the day before’s for a numerical example suppose you have daily data that goes 100, 120, 160, then 185. The increase for days 2-4 would be 20, 40 then 25. Day 4 would be an inflection point since that day’s increase was less than the previous day.
The significance of this is that if that trend continues, in the next week to two weeks, the actual daily numbers will start to decline. These governors can see the same data I can (or realistically they have people working for them who can see it). They did NOT start any mitigation efforts 2-3 weeks ago when the numbers started to rise. They started when they saw an inflection point.
Why do you suppose that is? They know darn well their actions are ineffective, but they wish to be credited with effectively managing the pandemic. Had they started two weeks ago, there would still be rising case numbers despite their efforts — can’t have that! Nope, they waited until they knew that the numbers would start declining in a week or two anyway, then “took measures” to reduce the cases.
Just a note on my post above: I’m using the 7 day moving average to look at data. There is a variability based on day of the week that gets smoothed out by doing so. The 7 day MA actually declined yesterday, and might do so again today, so the measures are beginning to “work” already.
LOL. Illinois case numbers started to decline drastically as soon as the tier 3 lockdown went into effect last Friday. Went from 14K cases per day to 8K per day in about 4 days