The Economist: “In a new working paper, researchers from Bentley University, the University of Colorado and San Diego State University used mobile-phone data from SafeGraph, a geolocation data firm, and covid-19 case data from the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention to determine whether the protests were associated with less social-distancing behaviour and more covid-19 cases. In fact, the opposite was true.”
“Using data from 315 American cities with at least 100,000 people, covering the period mid-May to mid-June, the researchers compared the experience of the 281 cities where protests erupted with the 34 where they did not. One third of protesting cities saw large-scale gatherings with 1,000 or more attendees, making those particular regions more susceptible to another outbreak. Nonetheless, they found that the protests had no significant effect one way or the other on the incidence of covid-19.”