Racial justice protests prior to this summer were not the driving force behind an increase in COVID-19 infections in the United States that some public fitness officials feared, perhaps because the marches were taking place outdoors where it is more difficult for the public. viruses that spread, according to one of them. first studies to read about a imaginable link.
A new survey [add URL] conducted through researchers from northeastern universities, Harvard, Northwest and Rutgers covered some 40,000 more people who participated in national demonstrations opposed to police brutality and white supremacy. The protesters were disproportionately younger Americans whose lives were deeply disrupted by the pandemic in a basic way, such as losing paints or relief in wages.
They were questioned in early June, shortly after George Floyd’s death in police custody, and ended in late July, a time that saw Black Lives Matter protests.
Looking at the dating between the accumulation of coronavirus cases in states with a higher involvement in the outbreak, the researchers wrote: “There is a transparent and significant negative correlation between the percentage of the population of a state that reported protesting and the next accumulation in COVID- 19 instances’.
In other words, the outbreaks were “going to be” the main driving force of the outbreak in June and July, says David Lazer, a prominent professor of political science and computer science and data science at Northeastern, and one of the researchers who led the study.
“We’re not saying that the protests haven’t caused any more cases, an assessment that will require a really extensive additional analysis,” he added. “It’s just that if they were the main drivers, then the sales options that had the maximum of protesters would be expected to experience the biggest increase, and in fact it’s quite the opposite.”
One imaginable explanation would possibly be the developing clinical consensus that internal proximity would possibly be the dominant pathway in the transmission of SARS-CoV-2, the guilty coronavirus of COVID-19.
“As such,” the study found, “it is imaginable that external proximity may not have a primary effect on propagation.”
Indoor spaces are more complicated than spaces, where it can be more complicated to separate other people and there is less ventilation, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warns.
Researchers observed Washington, D.C., which had marching rates of 13.7% (Massachusetts came in 9.0%, followed by a tie between New York and Vermont with 7.9% each. North Dakota and West Virginia were necessarily tied. 2.0 consistent with penny).
Although the country’s capital has been the scene of many marches, it has reported a small accumulation of virus cases during the same period, the researchers noted.
And, knowledge also shows that other people in regions of the country where outbreaks are most common also had higher levels of masking, highlighting some of the demanding situations of assessing the effect of outbreaks on the spread of the virus.
However, the researchers identified that more comprehensive research will be needed to integrate the points that have led to a recent acute accumulation of infections, such as adherence to distance measures and facial coverage, as well as to state policies.
“In any case,” they concluded, “it is difficult to reconcile the negative correlation between the percentage of the state population involved in the demonstrations and the replacement in new instances with the proposition that the outbreaks have been a major driving force for the recent outbreak. cases in the United States.”
Anticipating criticism that the lack of buildup may simply be due to a gap between the actual infection and symptoms that were not detected within the examination time period, Lazer said, “These manifestations began more than two months ago. If the protests spread, it would be more than enough to practice spreading far beyond the demonstrators to the wider communities.
A political thread has gone through some of the study’s findings. In particular, even in states with President Trump’s highest approval ratings, such as Kentucky, Oklahoma, and Wyoming, protests have attracted a bizarre two percent of the state’s population.
“Getting 2% of the population to take to the streets, regardless of the state, is huge,” Lazer said.
For media requests, please tap [email protected].
Did you like this story?