[BostonCard]

And given the demographics of this, I guess that the most selfish of all are America’s poor. Who are getting this at a higher rate. Selfish bastards. Imagine that during this pandemic they continue to live in higher density areas, live more often with multi generational families and that many  work outside the home, many times in high risk (and low paying) jobs.  They should just stay home.  So what If they cant eat. 

Sarcasm aside, this is a good point, and you are right to be calling out he Chron's statement.  Of the 155,000 deaths, the majority occurred in the "first wave", which hit the New York metro area.  By my calculation, more than 2/3 (104,000) occurred before cases started going up again June 1.



Of course, cases are going up again, and daily new cases have increased from 19,000 to 70,000 from the trough in mid-June to the second wave late July.  Figuring out what is driving this increase, independently of assigning "value" to it is important, as I mentioned in another post.  If the protests led to spread of COVID-19, that's important to know, even if you think the protests are an important expression of first amendment rights.  If it is being spread by essential activities, that's also important to know.  If it is being spread by "Fourth of July gatherings, graduation parties, no mask weddings, crowded bars", that too is important, even if you think it is important to continue such activities.



Certainly, that the protests could have led to a spike in cases is a plausible hypothesis.  As you mention, they brought thousands of people closely together for prolonged periods of time.  People were shouting loudly, and the protesters may have been exposed to tear gas and pepper spray, which can cause people to cough. And there is a there is a strong temporal correlation to the spike; the protests started in late May and the spike in cases started mid-June. That being said, I've seen multiple articles suggesting that the protests, which generally occur outside and in which adherence to mask-wearing is pretty high, did not drive the increase in cases.   Although there is a strong temporal correlation, there is a poor spatial correlation.  The spike in cases occurred primarily in the South and West; protests occurred throughout the US and in particular the Northeast and Midwest as shown in the map below:






Arizona, in particular, had a pretty bad spike, but fairly few protests.  I don't think the protests were worse in Los Angeles than the Bay Area, even though the spike was much worse in Southern California.  New York, New Jersey, Connecticut had a lot of protests and not much of a second wave.

I did a pretty back of the envelope calculation, looking at the ratio of the number of cases between the second peak week (the week of July 13 - 19, when there were ~465,000 new cases in the week, compared to the week of June 1 - 7, which was the trough (~148,000 new cases). The top-10 states with the highest ratio, representing the most dramatic rise in cases between the two weeks were: Montana (22-fold rise), Idaho (13.5-fold increase), Florida (9-fold increase), Oklahoma (6.9 fold increase), Nevada (6.7-fold increase), West Virginia (6.4-fold increase), Texas (6.3-fold increase), Hawaii (5.7-fold increase), Alaska (5.1-fold increase) and Louisiana (5.1-fold increase).  Even if you take out states like Montana, Idaho and Alaska as having a low baseline (and thus being prone to have a small increase in number of cases look like a big proportional increase), that leaves a bunch of states that are not exactly bastions of Black Lives Matter.  By contrast, in Minnesota (ground zero for the protests), where you might have expected to have a big spike in cases, only had a 1.4-fold increase in cases from early June to mid-July.  California and Oregon had an increase in cases comparable to the US as a whole (3.5 in Oregon, 3.3 in California).  Illinois had only a 1.2-fold increase.  DC actually saw a decrease (ratio was 0.8).  New York, New Jersey and Connecticut also had a continued decline (though that was a continuation of an existing trend), so the protests in those states did not reverse the positive trend in those states.

There are also a number of more refined articles that have looked to see if the protests played a role in increasing transmissions, most notably this NBER paper:

https://www.nber.org/papers/w27408

It notes that any increase in contact due to people participating in the protest was more than offset by fewer people venturing out because of the protests (of course, this does not mean that transmission didn't occur in the protests themselves, just that the net effect cancelled out).

Here's a link to the outcome of contact tracing in Knoxville, TN, linking positive cases to "parties and other large social gatherings, but not to protests" (it's not published so you can take it with a grain of salt)
https://www.wvlt.tv/2020/07/13/no-eviden...epartment/

Here's an interview with contact tracers in Florida and Washington:
https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus...oronavirus

"We did have a rally in Bellingham, which is our county seat, and there was also a protest, and we have not been able to connect a single case to that rally or to the protest, and what we're finding is in large part that's due to the use of masks," Erika Lautenbach, the director of the Whatcom County Health Department in Washington State, tells NPR's All Things Considered. "Almost everyone at the rally was wearing a mask, and it's really a testament to how effective masks are in preventing the spread of this disease."

"We're finding that the social events and gatherings, these parties where people aren't wearing masks, are our primary source of infection," Lautenbach says. "And then the secondary source of infection is workplace settings. There were 31 related employers just associated with that one party because of the number of people that brought that to their workplace. So for us, for a community our size, that's a pretty massive spread."

That being said, I did find one article linking cases to protests in Los Angeles, which is based on what Eric Garcetti (who I assume has access to the contact tracing data) has said publicly:

https://www.capradio.org/articles/2020/0...ll-sparse/

It's a well written article, and I agree with their conclusions:

What We Know
Los Angeles stands out in that its mayor and the county’s top public health official have both acknowledged a link between the region’s protests and spike in infections.

Officials and health experts elsewhere have said they do not see a significant connection between protests in their communities and the spread of the virus.

For now, at least, there’s not enough data to draw any definitive conclusions about how much the protests added to Los Angeles’ alarming surge in COVID-19 cases.

Medical experts say the protests likely contributed somewhat, but so did family gatherings over Mother’s Day and Memorial Day, as did the reopening of businesses before the demonstrations started.

BC

[BostonCard]

And given the demographics of this, I guess that the most selfish of all are America’s poor. Who are getting this at a higher rate. Selfish bastards. Imagine that during this pandemic they continue to live in higher density areas, live more often with multi generational families and that many  work outside the home, many times in high risk (and low paying) jobs.  They should just stay home.  So what If they cant eat. 

Sarcasm aside, this is a good point, and you are right to be calling out he Chron's statement.  Of the 155,000 deaths, the majority occurred in the "first wave", which hit the New York metro area.  By my calculation, more than 2/3 (104,000) occurred before cases started going up again June 1.



Of course, cases are going up again, and daily new cases have increased from 19,000 to 70,000 from the trough in mid-June to the second wave late July.  Figuring out what is driving this increase, independently of assigning "value" to it is important, as I mentioned in another post.  If the protests led to spread of COVID-19, that's important to know, even if you think the protests are an important expression of first amendment rights.  If it is being spread by essential activities, that's also important to know.  If it is being spread by "Fourth of July gatherings, graduation parties, no mask weddings, crowded bars", that too is important, even if you think it is important to continue such activities.



Certainly, that the protests could have led to a spike in cases is a plausible hypothesis.  As you mention, they brought thousands of people closely together for prolonged periods of time.  People were shouting loudly, and the protesters may have been exposed to tear gas and pepper spray, which can cause people to cough. And there is a there is a strong temporal correlation to the spike; the protests started in late May and the spike in cases started mid-June. That being said, I've seen multiple articles suggesting that the protests, which generally occur outside and in which adherence to mask-wearing is pretty high, did not drive the increase in cases.   Although there is a strong temporal correlation, there is a poor spatial correlation.  The spike in cases occurred primarily in the South and West; protests occurred throughout the US and in particular the Northeast and Midwest as shown in the map below:






Arizona, in particular, had a pretty bad spike, but fairly few protests.  I don't think the protests were worse in Los Angeles than the Bay Area, even though the spike was much worse in Southern California.  New York, New Jersey, Connecticut had a lot of protests and not much of a second wave.

I did a pretty back of the envelope calculation, looking at the ratio of the number of cases between the second peak week (the week of July 13 - 19, when there were ~465,000 new cases in the week, compared to the week of June 1 - 7, which was the trough (~148,000 new cases). The top-10 states with the highest ratio, representing the most dramatic rise in cases between the two weeks were: Montana (22-fold rise), Idaho (13.5-fold increase), Florida (9-fold increase), Oklahoma (6.9 fold increase), Nevada (6.7-fold increase), West Virginia (6.4-fold increase), Texas (6.3-fold increase), Hawaii (5.7-fold increase), Alaska (5.1-fold increase) and Louisiana (5.1-fold increase).  Even if you take out states like Montana, Idaho and Alaska as having a low baseline (and thus being prone to have a small increase in number of cases look like a big proportional increase), that leaves a bunch of states that are not exactly bastions of Black Lives Matter.  By contrast, in Minnesota (ground zero for the protests), where you might have expected to have a big spike in cases, only had a 1.4-fold increase in cases from early June to mid-July.  California and Oregon had an increase in cases comparable to the US as a whole (3.5 in Oregon, 3.3 in California).  Illinois had only a 1.2-fold increase.  DC actually saw a decrease (ratio was 0.8).  New York, New Jersey and Connecticut also had a continued decline (though that was a continuation of an existing trend), so the protests in those states did not reverse the positive trend in those states.

There are also a number of more refined articles that have looked to see if the protests played a role in increasing transmissions, most notably this NBER paper:

https://www.nber.org/papers/w27408

It notes that any increase in contact due to people participating in the protest was more than offset by fewer people venturing out because of the protests (of course, this does not mean that transmission didn't occur in the protests themselves, just that the net effect cancelled out).

Here's a link to the outcome of contact tracing in Knoxville, TN, linking positive cases to "parties and other large social gatherings, but not to protests" (it's not published so you can take it with a grain of salt)
https://www.wvlt.tv/2020/07/13/no-eviden...epartment/

Here's an interview with contact tracers in Florida and Washington:
https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus...oronavirus

"We did have a rally in Bellingham, which is our county seat, and there was also a protest, and we have not been able to connect a single case to that rally or to the protest, and what we're finding is in large part that's due to the use of masks," Erika Lautenbach, the director of the Whatcom County Health Department in Washington State, tells NPR's All Things Considered. "Almost everyone at the rally was wearing a mask, and it's really a testament to how effective masks are in preventing the spread of this disease."

"We're finding that the social events and gatherings, these parties where people aren't wearing masks, are our primary source of infection," Lautenbach says. "And then the secondary source of infection is workplace settings. There were 31 related employers just associated with that one party because of the number of people that brought that to their workplace. So for us, for a community our size, that's a pretty massive spread."

That being said, I did find one article linking cases to protests in Los Angeles, which is based on what Eric Garcetti (who I assume has access to the contact tracing data) has said publicly:

https://www.capradio.org/articles/2020/0...ll-sparse/

It's a well written article, and I agree with their conclusions:

What We Know
Los Angeles stands out in that its mayor and the county’s top public health official have both acknowledged a link between the region’s protests and spike in infections.

Officials and health experts elsewhere have said they do not see a significant connection between protests in their communities and the spread of the virus.

For now, at least, there’s not enough data to draw any definitive conclusions about how much the protests added to Los Angeles’ alarming surge in COVID-19 cases.

Medical experts say the protests likely contributed somewhat, but so did family gatherings over Mother’s Day and Memorial Day, as did the reopening of businesses before the demonstrations started.

BC