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NBER: Protests did not spread coronavrius

ReubenSherr said:
You do realize literally everything you link comes from areas which are 90% Liberal
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Again, I am not engaging conspiracy theory garbage.

You have a good night.
 
Visbek said:
Working Paper link is here: https://www.nber.org/papers/w27408.pdf

Sparked by the killing of George Floyd in police custody, the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests
have brought a new wave of attention to the issue of inequality within criminal justice. However,
many public health officials have warned that mass protests could lead to a reduction in social
distancing behavior, spurring a resurgence of COVID-19. This study uses newly collected data on
protests in 315 of the largest U.S. cities to estimate the impacts of mass protests on social
distancing and COVID-19 case growth. Event-study analyses provide strong evidence that net
stay-at-home behavior increased following protest onset, consistent with the hypothesis that
nonprotesters’ behavior was substantially affected by urban protests. This effect was not fully
explained by the imposition of city curfews. Estimated effects were generally larger for persistent
protests and those accompanied by media reports of violence. Furthermore, we find no evidence
that urban protests reignited COVID-19 case growth during the more than three weeks following
protest onset. We conclude that predictions of broad negative public health consequences of
Black Lives Matter protests were far too narrowly conceived.
(Emphasis added)

I think it's still a bit early to make that call -- 3-4 weeks after the start of the protests may not be enough time to see the full impact. Plus, no single study should be treated as definitive.

That said, I'm not too surprised by this. Furthermore, if it is correct, then I'd say it is a good sign that a lot of outdoor activities are relatively safe -- possibly including restaurants, beaches, concerts and more. (I'm a little more sanguine about bars, as drinking doesn't tend to make people more responsible. ;) )

Hopefully, the authors will continue to examine the situation, and update their research with new findings.
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This sort of thing could also be playing a role:
COVID Contact Tracers Don’t Ask About Floyd Protest Participation - THE CITY

Lawmaker, Educator Worried About Contact Tracers Not Asking About Attending Protests – CBS New York

Can't attribute any covid increase to something if you don't ask about it! Genius move by NY.
 
Chomsky said:
What "covering-up" is that? And by whom?
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The virus has attributes unnatural to coronaviruses and emerged in the same town as a level 4 bio lab which was known to be studying bat coronaviruses. And whenever people speculate there is a connection they are immediately shot down with insane and unnecessary rhetoric like “conspiracy theorist”
 
Visbek said:
Spare us the conspiracy theory nonsense.

You obviously aren't engaging anything whatsoever about the study, you're just objecting to its findings. Sorry not sorry, but I have no patience for such blatant bias.
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I’m sure you believe the “peaceful protestors” line with no reservations right?
 
jotathought said:
I would challenge this, as the guidance from CDC concerning the visitation of Parks and Recreational Areas states the following:



Either the guidance is correct or incorrect, and if studies show that densely populated outdoor gatherings are copacetic, then why was everything outdoors locked down for 2 - 3 months?
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Bullseye said:
Interesting. The spike in under 40 cases show no correlation to protests? So that means masks and social distancing have no value? And yet, the close and chaotic atmosphere in bars is being blamed for the spikes in Florida, Arizona and Texas. Maybe the heat from the burning buildings killed the virus during the riots. :eek:

I agree with you that mnp single study is definitive. There's no telling how many asymptomatic or mild cases returned home and infected others.
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Mongidig said:
Does the article go into how many people from the protests have been tested? I have a feeling a good amount of these people might not go to the doctor or get tested even if they were feeling ill. I'm curious about the sample size.

This article is way too long for me to read.

I still don't feel comfortable with large gatherings but the Ozarks and Michigan protests didn't spark much either.
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Actually , masks and social distancing help when inside. Masks help outside when large groups are together.

Everything was locked down because we were not aware that wearing masks outside might make up for the lack of social distancing.


Actually,It was only after testing was used on protesters on a few cities that they found out

the tests support that being outside and wearing masks did slow the spread of Covid even when there were large crowds were close together like the protester were.


Additionally, the peak of protests in some cities, like New York City, San Francisco, and Washington, DC, arrived several days after actions in Minneapolis, where the response to Floyd’s death was swift and furious.

Still, these early numbers are welcome news to Roger Shapiro, a professor of immunology and infectious diseases at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

“When I hear a 1 percent positivity rate, that’s encouraging to me that these protests are not representing new hot spots,” he says. That’s because 1 percent is around the background level of community transmission that might be expected if one were to test a large sample of randomly selected people.

Though Shapiro supports the protests, he was worried about their potential to seed new chains of infection.

So why didn’t they? His hunch is that two things protected protesters against disease transmission more than some scientists expected:
wearing masks and being outdoors.

“I think we would have seen a very different situation with fewer masks and indoor events,” says Shapiro.
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What Minnesota’s Protests Are Revealing About Covid-19 Spread | WIRED
 
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EMNofSeattle said:
Or alternately, the studies are purposefully covering up any protest spread of the virus for fear of being targeted by the neo-jacobin mobs on the streets.

I mean they are working overtime to cover up China’s labratory study of bat viruses in the very city this emerged from. These institutions must be considered compromised
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Supporting an immediate jump to a conspiracy theory with another conspiracy seems to be in vogue these days. Foolish, but still popular.
 
Visbek said:
Working Paper link is here: https://www.nber.org/papers/w27408.pdf

Sparked by the killing of George Floyd in police custody, the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests
have brought a new wave of attention to the issue of inequality within criminal justice. However,
many public health officials have warned that mass protests could lead to a reduction in social
distancing behavior, spurring a resurgence of COVID-19. This study uses newly collected data on
protests in 315 of the largest U.S. cities to estimate the impacts of mass protests on social
distancing and COVID-19 case growth. Event-study analyses provide strong evidence that net
stay-at-home behavior increased following protest onset, consistent with the hypothesis that
nonprotesters’ behavior was substantially affected by urban protests. This effect was not fully
explained by the imposition of city curfews. Estimated effects were generally larger for persistent
protests and those accompanied by media reports of violence. Furthermore, we find no evidence
that urban protests reignited COVID-19 case growth during the more than three weeks following
protest onset. We conclude that predictions of broad negative public health consequences of
Black Lives Matter protests were far too narrowly conceived.
(Emphasis added)

I think it's still a bit early to make that call -- 3-4 weeks after the start of the protests may not be enough time to see the full impact. Plus, no single study should be treated as definitive.

That said, I'm not too surprised by this. Furthermore, if it is correct, then I'd say it is a good sign that a lot of outdoor activities are relatively safe -- possibly including restaurants, beaches, concerts and more. (I'm a little more sanguine about bars, as drinking doesn't tend to make people more responsible. ;) )

Hopefully, the authors will continue to examine the situation, and update their research with new findings.
Click to expand...

I was pretty much impressed at the number of people wearing masks at BLM protests. To me that is a smart thing to do. Hope as many people wore then while waiting for hours in line to vote.
 
Bullseye said:
Interesting. The spike in under 40 cases show no correlation to protests? So that means masks and social distancing have no value? And yet, the close and chaotic atmosphere in bars is being blamed for the spikes in Florida, Arizona and Texas. Maybe the heat from the burning buildings killed the virus during the riots. :eek:

I agree with you that mnp single study is definitive. There's no telling how many asymptomatic or mild cases returned home and infected others.
Click to expand...

Most protesters I saw wore masks.
 
trixare4kids said:
The spike, surge, call it whatever you want to, is happening amongst Hispanics more than any other Demographic. Hell, look at San Diego county for starters and then google and it proves it. Proves that the spike is not with white people.

The left nutlugs and their media will have us believe it's Trump's base, um, not so. It's a lie they have conjured up to go against Trump.
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What utter nonsense! Your assumption is not proof of anything, and citing ONE area is hardly statistically significant. Furthermore if this virus is as innocent as so many idiots on the right have decided, then perhaps we should have an explanation for why Tulsa attendees were made to sign a waiver absolving Trump from any responsibility for their inevitable sickness.
 
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beerftw said:
I really want to see the full math, how crowds who mostly wore no masks or social distanced somehow had no effect on the increase but states who reopened with restrictions for safety must somehow be to blame, but not tens of thousands of protesters huddled together, or the vast ramping up of testin.

I generally would call bs as around here all the areas with large spike are all the areas affected by protesters in mass like austin dallas san antonio and houston, the non protesting areas are freaking out like my county because we hit an all time high of 80 hospitalizations and the news reports despite having 362k polulation in the county.
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If only the OP had linked to the research paper that explained its method! ;)
 
HumblePi said:
[h=1]East Lansing bar linked to 85 positive cases of coronavirus[/h]https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/michigan/2020/06/27/east-lansing-bar-linked-85-positive-cases-coronavirus/3272687001



So, 85 cases of Covid-19 in one single bar in Lansing -- you know that city where the protestors stormed the state capital building demanding businesses be reopened so they could go back into their favorite bar -- compared to tens of thousands of protestors wearing masks. What's to think about?
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But protesters are immune. :lamo
 
Visbek said:
Working Paper link is here: https://www.nber.org/papers/w27408.pdf

Sparked by the killing of George Floyd in police custody, the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests
have brought a new wave of attention to the issue of inequality within criminal justice. However,
many public health officials have warned that mass protests could lead to a reduction in social
distancing behavior, spurring a resurgence of COVID-19. This study uses newly collected data on
protests in 315 of the largest U.S. cities to estimate the impacts of mass protests on social
distancing and COVID-19 case growth. Event-study analyses provide strong evidence that net
stay-at-home behavior increased following protest onset, consistent with the hypothesis that
nonprotesters’ behavior was substantially affected by urban protests. This effect was not fully
explained by the imposition of city curfews. Estimated effects were generally larger for persistent
protests and those accompanied by media reports of violence. Furthermore, we find no evidence
that urban protests reignited COVID-19 case growth during the more than three weeks following
protest onset. We conclude that predictions of broad negative public health consequences of
Black Lives Matter protests were far too narrowly conceived.
(Emphasis added)

I think it's still a bit early to make that call -- 3-4 weeks after the start of the protests may not be enough time to see the full impact. Plus, no single study should be treated as definitive.

That said, I'm not too surprised by this. Furthermore, if it is correct, then I'd say it is a good sign that a lot of outdoor activities are relatively safe -- possibly including restaurants, beaches, concerts and more. (I'm a little more sanguine about bars, as drinking doesn't tend to make people more responsible. ;) )

Hopefully, the authors will continue to examine the situation, and update their research with new findings.
Click to expand...


I suspect that's been the protests' saving grace. I'm still curious to see if this holds water because there are a lot of variables in the consistency of mask usage and the fact you have large groups of people speaking in raised voices, which spread droplets further and in close proximity to others.
 
"L.A. County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer called it "highly likely" that the county's recent rise in COVID-19 cases is linked to the ongoing protests against police brutality (along with an increase in social gatherings and reopened local businesses)"

You have been blocked

Who is in a better position to make judgments about the effect of protests in Los Angeles?

L. A. County's own health director, or a group of liberal researchers from Cambridge, Massachusetts?
 
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Phys251 said:
If only the OP had linked to the research paper that explained its method! ;)
Click to expand...

Only it did and it did not at all back up the theory at all. They went off cell phone data, and does not have any backing by scientific theory or even logic.
 
Visbek said:
It's a 60 page paper. Link is at the top of the OP.



It is probably because poorly ventilated indoor environments where people aren't wearing masks are much more likely to spread the virus than outdoor environments where at least some people are wearing masks.

We should note that there are already a lot of bars, churches, casinos, strip joints, meat-packing plants and other indoor spaces that have become hot spots in just the past few weeks.



You shouldn't, as numerous other protest centers like Minneapolis, New York, DC, San Francisco etc haven't had a spike in cases. There were also lots of protests in Europe, and no big spike in cases.

There are also numerous counties, such as on the east coast of Florida, where there weren't huge protests and are big spikes in cases.

Plus, just saying "it's spreading in Houston!" isn't enough to prove that protests are at fault. Big cities like that also have bars, churches, restaurants and lots of other places where the virus spreads.
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Still not buying it, it defies all logic and knowledge to date on how the coronavirus functions, so either this study was complete bs or scientists on their studies were complete bs.
 
Currently in Minnesota, amongst those 30 and under:
Ebob1pGXQAAleWN


Now I wonder what current event, in the last several weeks, could possibly have occurred that involved a lot of young people, in close quarters with one another where a virus could easily spread, to cause such a drastic rise....... A rise starting right around the 15th of June and going up steadily from there....... Hmmmmmmm..... maybe several weeks of rabid protests and riots?
 
EMNofSeattle said:
The virus has attributes unnatural to coronaviruses and emerged in the same town as a level 4 bio lab which was known to be studying bat coronaviruses. And whenever people speculate there is a connection they are immediately shot down with insane and unnecessary rhetoric like “conspiracy theorist”
Click to expand...
Conspiracy theory. The Bat Lady was doing extremely important work, as can be seen by the current events.
 
beerftw said:
I really want to see the full math, how crowds who mostly wore no masks or social distanced somehow had no effect on the increase but states who reopened with restrictions for safety must somehow be to blame, but not tens of thousands of protesters huddled together, or the vast ramping up of testin.

I generally would call bs as around here all the areas with large spike are all the areas affected by protesters in mass like austin dallas san antonio and houston, the non protesting areas are freaking out like my county because we hit an all time high of 80 hospitalizations and the news reports despite having 362k polulation in the county.
Click to expand...

Most protesters wore masks, almost all protestors were outside. Protests were in 100+ cities yet the increases were limited to idiot America where we allowed bars, restaurants, and churches to operate like it was pre-covid. That doesn't mean that protests were safe. They were just not as dangerous as drinking in a bar.

The recent spread has been linked to bars, churches, and restaurants in which people were inside with no masks. How is this hard? Gatherings outside can be bad, but gatherings inside are 20x worse. THIS IS NOT HARD. This is not political. If you don't want to have everything locked down again then wear a god damned mask and avoid indoor gatherings. Stop ruining it for the responsible people.
 
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