Texas cases started its increase a few days after the protests started
California case numbers took a jump up a few days after the protests started
not saying the protests is the only cause of increased cases only that it should be considered as one of the causes
Texas is a strange case. It looks like Texas started its statewide rise right on May 26. Yes, that was also the day after Floyd was killed. But given the amount of time it took protests to start spreading, and then if you build in lag time, there is no way that the cases could have spread quickly enough to be coincident with the May 26 start of the rise.
And I agree--protests SHOULD be considered one of the causes of rise. Some people did take precautions (masks & distancing) but others did not. To think that many people in close proximity had zero spread is just not sensible.
So what happened on May 26th
Day was picked because it was the first "record" day since May 9. California also had 4 record days between Apr 20 and May 9.
If you look at the CA 7-day moving average, it was up until about Apr 8, paused/declined slightly until Apr 19, was up again to about May 9, paused/declined slightly until May 16, and then started its current trend up. Between May 16 (a Saturday), every single day except May 17-18 (Sun/Mon which are typical "low" days) was higher than May 16. That even includes the following Sun/Mon, May 23-24.
So California's current rise started well before May 26--that was just the day that had passed the previous record of May 9.
I won't speak for California, or even the rest of Texas, but in Austin I don't believe your statement is necessarily true. Large protests started 3 weeks ago, the largest increasing age group of new cases in Austin is 20-29, and this is what the case trend looks like in Austin:
[img width=500 height=202.975]https://i.ibb.co/H439vMm/Austin-Covid.png[/img]
https://austin.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/39e4f8d4acb0433baae6d15a931fa984
That's not smooth and steady, by any definition.
Whereas, 3 weeks after reopening on May 1, all trends in Austin metro were actually going down, and continued trending down for 3 weeks-- until this most recent uptick began within the last 10 days.
There's no way to know for sure-- contract tracers are not allowed to ask if the positive test cases attended any protests-- but I believe there's at least some reasonable evidence, in Austin, that the protests are having an effect on the current increasing case counts.
Again, I think the protests definitely have an effect. I don't know specific to Austin whether the protests involved people who were actually taking precautions (masks/distancing) or not. I'm not trying to discount the idea that protests cause spread.
I do think even beyond the protests (as that Florida link I provided above) may show, the younger folks tend to be trying to return to "normal" far more than anyone else. In addition to protests, if they're also hitting the bars, having parties, etc, that will increase the numbers too.
I support reopening--but I think for too many people "reopening" means "back to normal", and that's going to be a problem.