You've undoubtedly heard that "hospitalization rates are a lagging indicator," which is true. What that means is from the date you're infected it takes a few days for you to develop symptoms, then several days of feeling bad at home before you feel bad enough to go to the ER. /1

Because of that, if there's a day or event where a lot of people are exposed to (and infected with) COVID-19, then we should expect to see an increase in hospitalization rates roughly 2 weeks later, right? /2

Right. So, I used @pmonies excellent graph and added 2-week window overlays from Memorial Day & Independence Day. You can see that hospitalizations bottomed out around Memorial Day, and then 2 roughly weeks later, they begin to increase. /3

Without looking at the hard number it's hard to say exactly *how* quickly cases have been increasing, but just eyeballing the graph it appears to have not increased more since July 4th, at least not yet. (Of course, there is also a limit to hospital capacity. /4

My anecdotal observations (based entirely at Target & Lowe's on May, bc that's about the only places I've gone) indicates that by July 4th there were more people wearing masks than in June. So maybe they saw the data and began to modify their behavior, who knows? /5

Clearly it wasn't everyone, of course, because hospitalizations continue to increase.

With mask requirements in place in most large cities in Oklahoma, we should expect no change for a few days, followed by a decrease in new cases, followed by a decrease in hospitalizations. /6

It'll take a week or so post-mask mandate for the new case data to reflect the change, then another week or so for the hospitalization numbers to reflect it. So, keep wearing your masks and I'll post another graphical update in a couple of weeks. /7/end