This is more of a “hypothesis available to me” than an active prediction, and I don’t really know offhand how we’d check it. But the European soccer championship ended on July 11th. England hosted a few of the games, notably including the final and semifinals; I’m not sure how much difference that would have made. (I guess the number of people going to the stadium wouldn’t have impacted the numbers too much?) But also, my impression is lots of people went to the pub to watch the games, especially the ones with England and especially the final. I could see that making a big difference.
So, one factor might have been that the Euros were making case counts rise faster than they would have done otherwise, and then they stopped doing that.
This is more of a “hypothesis available to me” than an active prediction, and I don’t really know offhand how we’d check it. But the European soccer championship ended on July 11th. England hosted a few of the games, notably including the final and semifinals; I’m not sure how much difference that would have made. (I guess the number of people going to the stadium wouldn’t have impacted the numbers too much?) But also, my impression is lots of people went to the pub to watch the games, especially the ones with England and especially the final. I could see that making a big difference.
So, one factor might have been that the Euros were making case counts rise faster than they would have done otherwise, and then they stopped doing that.