When you looked at photos of those massive protests against racism and police violence in cities across the country, you may have thought, “Wow, the whole city is out there.” You may have also thought, “This is going to cause a spike in coronavirus cases.”
Both assumptions would be wrong, according to the latest study.
The study, written by five U.S. academics, looked at anonymized cellphone data and found that in counties with large protests, more people reacted to the protests by staying at home more. As a result, even as people broke social distancing norms at protests, net social distancing increased when the big protests flared up.
Why? Probably for all sorts of reasons. Protests cause traffic jams. Protests sometimes lead to riots and burning and looting. Police officers at protests sometimes shove people or release tear gas.
Unless you’re part of the small minority that actually showed up at the protests, this study found, you were more likely to stay home.
The researchers also found no detectable spike in coronavirus cases in cities that held protests or the counties surrounding them. This doesn’t mean the protests didn’t spread the virus — it means that any spreading effect by the protests was offset by non-protesters staying at home more.
As the authors put it: “While it is possible that the protests caused an increase in the spread of COVID-19 among those who attended the protests, we demonstrate that the protests had little effect on the spread of COVID-19 for the entire population of the counties with protests during the more than three weeks following protest onset.”
This isn’t great news. The last thing we need is more people feeling afraid of their neighbors.
And if the protests did cause most people to stay home, one would expect a decrease in coronavirus spread. This does not appear to be the case. And so, this suggests that the virus did indeed spread at the protests despite people being outdoors and even though many protesters wore masks.
