US lockdown protests may have spread virus
widely, cellphone data suggests
Devices associated with protesters travelled up to
hundreds of miles after rallies where few precautions were taken
Jason
Wilson
@jason_a_w
Published
onMon 18 May 2020 12.18 BST
Cellphone
location data suggests that demonstrators at anti-lockdown protests – some of
which have been connected with Covid-19 cases – are often traveling hundreds of
miles to events, returning to all parts of their states, and even crossing into
neighboring ones.
The data,
provided to the Guardian by the progressive campaign group the Committee to
Protect Medicare, raises the prospect that the protests will play a role in
spreading the coronavirus epidemic to areas which have, so far, experienced
relatively few infections.
The
anonymized location data was captured from opt-in cellphone apps, and data
scientists at the firm VoteMap used it to determine the movements of devices
present at protests in late April and early May in five states: Michigan, Wisconsin,
Illinois, Colorado and Florida.
They then
created visualizations that tracked the movements of those devices up to 48
hours after the conclusion of protests. The visualizations only show movements
within states, due to the queries analysts made in creating them. But the data
scientist Jeremy Fair, executive-vice president of VoteMap, says that many of
the devices that are seen to reach state borders are seen to continue across
them in the underlying raw data.
One
visualization shows that in Lansing, Michigan, after a 30 April protest in
which armed protesters stormed the capitol building and state police were
forced to physically block access to Governor Gretchen Whitmer, devices which
had been present at the protest site can be seen returning to all parts of the
state, from Detroit to remote towns in the state’s north.
One device
visible in the data traveled to and from Afton, which is over 180 miles from
the capital. Others reached, and some crossed, the Indiana border.
In the 48
hours following a 19 April “Operation Gridlock” protest in Denver, devices
reached the borders of neighboring states including Wyoming, Nebraska,
Oklahoma, New Mexico and Utah.
In Florida
on 18 April, devices returned to all parts of the peninsula and up to the
Georgia border. In Wisconsin on 24 April, devices returned to smaller towns
like Green Bay and Wausau, and the borders of Minnesota and Illinois.
Following
the initial wave of anti-lockdown protests in April, epidemiologists warned
that they could lead to a new surge in cases.
In North
Carolina in late April, one of the leaders of the state’s anti-lockdown
protests tested positive for Covid-19 but said she would attend future rallies.
Dr Rob
Davidson, executive director of the Committee to Protect Medicare, said that
although “it’s hard to draw a straight line between devices, individuals at
these protests, and cases”, the data suggests that the protests may be
epidemiologically significant events.
“The
behavior we’re seeing at protests carries a high risk of infection. We can see
protesters are going from a highly concentrated event and then dispersing
widely,” he added.
Davidson,
who has run for Congress as a Democrat, said that neither he nor his advocacy
group were currently affiliated with the Democratic party. The group is made up
of more than 300 “doctors who are concerned that the healthcare for their
patients has become unaffordable”.
In a series
of widely shared videos and threads on Twitter, Davidson has criticized Trump,
and attempted to dispel what he calls the “distrust in public health” which
“Donald Trump has fomented in his movement”.
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