Party vs protest: Why one spreads COVID while the other didn’t
You can blame the 4th of July.
It’s becoming clear that Independence Day revelers have contributed to a spike in the numbers of new COVID-19 infections in Michigan. The virus has an incubation period of two to 14 days.
According to an article on MLive, about 5,400 people have contracted the virus since that weekend. Within a week, cases had jumped by 47%.
A month earlier, people poured into the streets to protest police brutality and the death of George Floyd. Data shows those events did not cause a spike in COVID-19 cases. In fact, June saw the lowest numbers of infections in Michigan since the beginning of the pandemic.
The article on MLive identifies five reasons for the different outcomes:
- Protesters were outdoors moving around. Many revelers were indoors and stationary for long periods of time.
- Protests and parties are different environments with different kinds of interactions.
- Protestors mostly wore masks and practiced social distancing.
- The protests caused non-protesters to stay home.
- The protests happened at a time when community transmission of the virus was already low.
You can read the full story here.
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