The correlation between testing and cases is over .8. 1 is perfect correlation, so this is a very high correlation. Now it could be that when there is lots of transmission, lots of testing is needed, but what happens around the holidays or when kids are out of school, suggests that the causation runs the other way. When you are forcing lots of testing, you will find “cases”. And the level of contacts, which is likely directly related to transmission, around the holidays, while different in nature, is probably not that different in number. People may be gathering with friends and family more, but they aren’t going to school or to work or engaging in other activities. Minnesota’s DOH has largely given up on their ineffectual contact tracing, but the state never had data showing that holiday gatherings had anything to do with transmission. Dave Dixon put together these charts showing testing and cases. You can see that just like last year around Thanksgiving, testing stopped and so did cases. Only people who really were sick got tested, which is how it should be all the time. The charts are a little busy, but the correlation is clear.
Correlation and Causation … that argument will continue, and may never end.
“There’s always firemen at the scene of a fire. The bigger the fire, the more firemen you see. Therefore: Firemen cause fires.”