Covid-19 Cases and Social Restrictions – What does the Chart Say?

Let’s play a game for a moment. I went to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and pulled up 6 regions in the US to see the trend in new COVID-19 cases being reported. Specifically, I downloaded the seven-day moving average of new cases (per 100K), by number of days since .01 average daily cases (per 100K) first recorded.

Take a look at the following chart: Can you tell which line or lines (which represents a State) has or have implemented the LEAST restrictive lockdown measures?

If you are like most people you would have said the top lines. If you did you are wrong. 

Here are the places in the Chart: 

Texas and Mississippi have lifted all COVID restriction for almost a month since the writing of this post, yet the trend is down since that time. 

Please note that the data has already been adjusted to accounted for population size and density; therefore such pretext cannot be use in this example. Adjusting the data per 100K (or a higher number if the size is larger) is the standard way that these types of analyses are constructed in order to properly compare population-related data that varies by size.  

The data from the Chart comes directly from the COVID Data Tracker from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Check it out or yourself.