No, Oregon isn’t a case study against mask mandates

And that’s what has happened in Oregon. The mask mandate was instituted Aug. 24, because the state was seeing a spike in cases. It went from a seven-day average of about 1,000 daily new cases in early August to more than 2,000 when the mandate was instituted. And the rate stayed north of 2,000 for a while, meaning there were suddenly significantly more people who had recently been infected who needed to recover, relative to Aug. 24.