Debunking Holiday Covid Spikes

Were there actually post-Thanksgiving and post-Christmas Covid spikes?

It’s seen as common knowledge that the holidays caused covid to spike this winter. Yet and the media has hyped other recent “Covid Super Spreader Events” that haven’t come to pass many are starting to speculate that maybe none of the supposed post holiday spikes were real at all. Having recently debunked the Super “Spreader Bowl, I'd like to back up this broader hypothesis with hard data. Here's a map of the US showing the day Covid hospitalizations peaked in each state (color coded by week):

As you can see, there's no trend based on the holidays. In fact, the upper mid-west peaked before Thanksgiving and basically the entire northern half of the country peaked prior to Christmas. It was really just the sunbelt and the mid-Atlantic states that peaked in January.

Had the national holidays been the route of all this spread you'd expect a more uniform map. Instead what we observed was regional and likely seasonal influences causing the spikes. For example compare the map above to a standard US climate map:

Here's one more graph showing hospitalizations for each state with the three major winter holidays marked. Again, no nationwide pattern whatsoever! And no discernible influences from the holidays either. States on the way up kept going up at about the same rate, and states on the way down kept going down...

You’d think with data like this our health department betters would quit claiming there was a holiday spike. Don’t hold your breathe.

Anyway, 0 and 2…