Do you know for a fact there are no mandates or are you just selectively hearing things? Even if there wasn't a state wide mandate, that doesn't mean squat with private businesses. It's not either/or, the mandates are meant to be temporary in nature, not some long term thing like you seem to insinuate here
The rates are low because people are doing something reasonable. That doesn't mean that is the case everywhere even with a similar set of circumstances, you're extrapolating from your anecdotal context and assuming that no mandates= lower cases when I seriously doubt that bears out in the numbers
Natural immunity is not a guarantee with a novel virus and evolution thereof, you act like our immune systems can never be the actual cause of our deaths, like they aren't essentially biomechanical and not working on human nuance. No, they can induce fever, dysentery, cytokine storm, all under a pretense that they are protecting us. Thing is, they don't have an excuse, the immune system is a microcosm of nature in a way and unlike humans, there isn't some guided aspect, just basic protocols they follow at best.
