I'm from SF but am currently in Lee County, Florida, where indoor dining and gyms have been open for months. Outside of staff, people are barely wearing masks except at the grocery store and salons. Not only is stuff open, restaurants are full and no one is enforcing distancing.

Yet according to this risk tracker, Lee County has lower transmission currently than San Francisco, which has almost everything closed and only ever opened outside dining and salons & gyms at 25% capacity. How is this even possible? I'm truly confounded. https://www.aei.org/covid-2019-action-tracker/

Lee County has about 770,000 people and has had about 20,000 more cases than SF (and I think about 500 more deaths). Still, there is no panic here. I haven't heard that ICUs are overwhelmed or that people are dying right or left. It's like there is no pandemic happening.

Is it just that Florida is blessed with great wintertime weather that makes it easy to sit outside to eat half the time anyway? It's well below the 37th latitude line so going for walks and on a boat ensures you get enough vitamin D? I am genuinely confused at the differences.

I went to a hibachi-style restaurant on Saturday that was completely indoors and packed. People were singing "happy birthday" at every table. Apparently it's been open for months, filled with people. Only the staff in masks. Why is there not rampant covid here?

I've been following their daily case updates and there's about 359 new cases a day, which is what SF was having a couple weeks ago (SF has declined). But it's steady, not explosive. If you multiple how many interactions are happening here unmasked, it's many times that of SF.

And that is taking into consideration that people are definitely meeting up in SF indoors; however, I think that while there are those who are not complying, most people (myself included) were not gathering indoors with many people very often (I wasn't).

I think I am just astounded to consider the sheer volume of interactions that are happening here daily inside restaurants & bars, gyms, salons, etc., many people without masks and have been for months. Yet models would have predicted total calamity. What gives!?

A follow up. I found hospitalization data for Florida. Lee County currently has 129 people hospitalized for covid, SF has 192. I think what I am astounded by is the DEGREE to which things are open here and how long it's been that way. https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/d2726d6c01c4486181fec2d4373b01fa/page/page_4/

Also does anyone know when Lee County had the most people in the hospital? I can't find any data that shows it over time like I can see for San Francisco. I would be curious to see how it relates to when things reopened here and compares to SF (even though they are v diff places)

Update just to show that when I say the county is open, it’s OPEN. And crowded.

And for Lee County data on cases, hospitalizations, and deaths, this is a comprehensive dashboard.

https://business.fau.edu/covidtracker/data/lee-county/index.php