by ratioetlogicae
Here’s the article, with an excerpt:
coloradosun.com/2020/06/30/police-protests-coronavirus-spread/
Friedson said his paper doesn’t try to figure out whether the protests spread the virus among the people at the protest. Instead, he said the research took the bigger-picture view: What did the protests mean for overall transmission of the virus within the entire community?
The study looked at 315 American cities with populations of more than 100,000 and found that 281 of those cities saw protests. The remaining 34 cities that did not see protests — which, at the time, included Aurora — were used as a control group against which to measure the impact of the protests.
The researchers found that protests correlated with a net increase in overall stay-at-home behavior in cities where they occurred — and the increase was larger in cities that saw more sustained protests or reports of violence.
Here’s a link to the non-peer reviewed study that the article references, with its abstract:
www.nber.org/papers/w27408.pdf
ABSTRACT
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.
WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY: Black Lives Matter protests may have slowed overall spread of coronavirus in Denver and other cities, new study finds.
In accordance with the prophecy: WHO Scientists Confirm Coronavirus Only Spreads At Conservative Protests.