Of the sixteen counties in and around the Nashville metro area, eight had mask mandates for much of the last two months. Of these eight, all except one were ended or allowed to expire at the end of September. The only one left is Davidson County, where the city of Nashville is located. Mask mandates worked for a while. See the graph below for a comparison of new COVID-19 cases with and without mask mandates this summer. The graph ends on September 30th, as that is when most of the mask mandates expired.
The counties that had mandates are larger than the others, so two vertical axes are used to make the data comparable. As you can see, once mandates were enacted, cases started dropping. Counties with mask mandates saw bigger decreases than those without. Cases dropped until schools re-opened. Those counties that had mandates saw little increase over the month of September, while counties without mandates experienced a significant jump in new cases. Now that most of the mandates have ended, cases will likely increase across the Nashville metro area. In my next post, I will look at how cases have changed in counties that had mask mandates prior to September 30.
Great stuff, Christian. Given the significant decreases once governments issued the mask mandates and the increases without them, why would they give up the masks?
Great question, Doug. I don’t understand it either. It’s like firemen quitting after putting out half the flames rather than continuing until it is completely extinguished.
People don’t like the requirements, so I believe it is because people complain to local leadership about them.
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