It looks like that rapid increase was a return to pre-covid normal. It never spikes above pre-covid. Given the world was returning to normal, this is precisely what you'd expect most trends to look like, something like in-restaurant dining probably looks similar.

As the authors note, their data only goes back to 2018. So “pre-COVID normal” is tough to confirm here.

Then we have to figure out why it dropped so much pre-COVID. Because the timeline doesn’t say it can possibly be Flock.

Same for the 2023 drop. The timeline simply doesn’t match up with Flock’s rollout.

That’s why I said “how I read this chart is ….” I don’t know what pre2018 looked like either. But on this chart, it was the precovid portion.

Nowhere on here am I seeing how covid caused a spike up, that’s what you said though and signifying our differences in reading the chart that was shown.