We got here by whalesalad complaining about people that don't wear masks. What's the point of masks? To slow the spread of the disease. So unless you've got some reason to think that death rates per infection are radically higher in Detroit than anywhere else along the route, then death rates are a somewhat-imperfect-but-still-somewhat-useful proxy for infection rates.

And therefore your comment is pretty pointless. If Detroit is doing worse about preventing infection than all these places that aren't using masks, then being there for the next month is probably going to be worse than passing through all those non-mask-using places for a week or two. (Unless you have reason to think that Detroit not only reached herd immunity, but did so long enough ago that people aren't currently contagious there. But if you think that, I'd like to see your data. More, I'd like to see why you think that about Detroit but not about the non-mask-using-and-therefore-presumably-spreading hinterlands.)