[pettazz]

The reason for case counts staying relatively low in those places has a lot less to do with "herd immunity" and a lot more to do with still being careful. Even though a huge number of people were infected, it was still a very small amount of the population overall, not anywhere near enough to affect the transmission rate with no restrictions.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/07/herd-immunity-questioned-aft...

In MA we're not even close to entirely reopened yet, but as we continue step by step the transmission rate is ticking back up unfortunately: https://rt.live/us/MA

[standardUser]

If you look at the numbers throughout the Northeast, you see a remarkable consistency. New cases are at a trickle, despite lots of reopening (more in some places than others) and weeks of mass protests throughout the larger cities.

I am in NYC and mask compliance here is... OK. But people are generally going out a lot, eating out a lot, shopping, etc, with very little concern. Weeks keep passing without even a tiny uptick in the rate of new cases. Clearly, there is something suppressing the transmission rate in this region. The exact same holds true for Europe.

[mjmahone17]

If you haven’t left NYC, it may also be true that our perception of “going out a lot” is about equivalent to much of the nation’s “lockdown” perception.

In other parts of the country, like Florida and Arizona, it doesn’t seem like the transmission rate ever really went below 1: it just hovered around 1.

So now NY, Boston, etc are “opening up” to a roughly equivalent position that those states were in when they were under “total lockdown”: in NYC, we still don’t have indoor dining, for example, whereas Arizona still allows 50% capacity indoor dining despite nearly running out of ICU beds in most hospitals.

When you’re in the center of the epidemic, merely getting to an infection rate of 1 is not good enough. NYC got well below that. I don’t think everywhere else did, and even the places “shutting down again” may not be doing enough.

[kevin_thibedeau]

The rest of New York has been in phase three with indoor dining for a few weeks now.

[perl4ever]

That doesn't tell you whether people actually are, the way they may be in some other places. Is actual behavior at all the same in, say, NY vs FL?

I'm fatalistic about avoiding the virus in the long run, and I go out whenever I have something to do, but my food has all come from the grocery store or mail order since March. I'm still asking myself "do I need to do this" every time I consider going somewhere.

[standardUser]

I can tell you that in Manhattan, what I see are throngs of people with and without masks, enjoying parks and food and drink all day every day, often in crowded patios. Not to mention the hundreds of protests that have occurred.

[SpicyLemonZest]

You've gotta be a bit skeptical of models like this. The source data it's drawn from looks pretty indistinguishable from a flat line; there's no reason to necessarily expect their model is precise or accurate enough to distinguish 1.04 from 0.96.

[lsllc]

Rt measures the "acceleration" of the infection. When you're down to a fairly flat ~150 cases per day then by definition Rt is going to be around 1. Also note that the reported daily case totals include backdated tests and when sorted by date, you'll see a steady decline and MA is pretty much flat now (see page 2 & 4 of [0]).

A state that was reporting 10 cases a day consistently would have an Rt of 1.0, if they reported 11, then the Rt would be 1.1. Similarly, VT which has an Rt of 1.07 despite only reporting 5 new cases yesterday as they are bouncing around in the single digits to low teens -- seems like it's basically noise now affecting the Rt there at this point.

It is going to be quite difficult to get it to zero in MA without closing the state borders. Logan Airport had 203,328 passengers through it in May 2020 [1], that's an average of 6777/day, at a 2% positivity rate that could be 135 cases a day right there (not including tens of thousands of people driving into the state, although our neighbors are in similar situations to MA rate-wise).

It's worth noting that MA has recently opened up testing to anyone who wants it so we're likely picking up more asymptomatic cases now. At this point contact-tracing is going to be key although they've had to lay off [2] many of the tracers due to lack of work for them.

The state continues to do well, we've had restaurants open (indoor and outdoor dining) for several weeks now, gyms have been open for a week (except Boston opened gyms yesterday) and 4th July was 10 days ago. The state tested 17K protestors [3] in June and only found a 2.5% positive rate (which was the same as the state-wide rate at the time).

We'll see, but I'm hopeful and will continue to do my part; distancing & masks in public.

[0] https://www.mass.gov/doc/covid-19-dashboard-july-13-2020/dow...

[1] http://www.massport.com/media/4100/0520-avstats-airport-traf...

[2] https://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/2020/06/29/covid-contact...

[3] https://www.masslive.com/coronavirus/2020/06/after-black-liv...