I’m not following you. I’m not suggesting that it was only the festivals that caused the surge. The article and several other articles suggest that it was partly the laxity of social distancing and mask wearing that caused the variants to become so deadly. If everyone was social distancing, mask wearing or just plain isolating, it wouldn’t matter about the variants because people would be lowering their risk of getting it.
Here’s an article on why the surge in India. This article basically talks about the reduction in social distancing and mask wearing.
Here’s another article. This one does talk about the variants and does mention that it’s difficult to know how much the laxity or the virulence of the variant is responsible.
But he still notes that if there were stricter measures taken when the variant was discovered, then this might not have happened. That still goes back to laxity at some point.
The fact is, we should all be a lot less comfortable about “knowing” what causes surges and case drops. I have no doubt distancing and masks have a mitigating effect but there are obviously much bigger factors that are unknown. I know swimming moves me in the water but it doesn’t matter much if I get caught in a riptide.
This was a predictable response from you. I’ve been reading on why the increase in Texas and Florida didn’t happen. Yes, the statewide mask mandates were dropped, but compliance was not that much different than before. What the government mandates doesn’t matter as much if the population does something different. In Texas, many people didn’t follow the governor’s dropping of the mask mandate. Also, the State of Texas had a huge amount of cancellations of big events that had been planned, so there was less opportunity for people to get infected.
In contrast, in India, the government didn’t change its policies. The people just did more things with less social distancing and masks, like the festivals and political rallies.
It matters what the people do, not what the government says they can do.