US lockdown protests may have spread virus widely, cellphone data suggests

Cellphone location data suggests that demonstrators at anti-lockdown protests – some of which have been connected with Covid-19 cases – are often traveling hundreds of miles to events, returning to all parts of their states, and even crossing into neighboring ones.

The data, provided to the Guardian by the progressive campaign group the Committee to Protect Medicare, raises the prospect that the protests will play a role in spreading the coronavirus epidemic to areas which have, so far, experienced relatively few infections.

The anonymized location data was captured from opt-in cellphone apps, and data scientists at the firm VoteMap used it to determine the movements of devices present at protests in late April and early May in five states: Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, Colorado and Florida.

They then created visualizations that tracked the movements of those devices up to 48 hours after the conclusion of protests. The visualizations only show movements within states, due to the queries analysts made in creating them. But the data scientist Jeremy Fair, executive-vice president of VoteMap, says that many of the devices that are seen to reach state borders are seen to continue across them in the underlying raw data.

One visualization shows that in Lansing, Michigan, after a 30 April protest in which armed protesters stormed the capitol building and state police were forced to physically block access to Governor Gretchen Whitmer, devices which had been present at the protest site can be seen returning to all parts of the state, from Detroit to remote towns in the state’s north.

One device visible in the data traveled to and from Afton, which is over 180 miles from the capital. Others reached, and some crossed, the Indiana border.

In the 48 hours following a 19 April “Operation Gridlock” protest in Denver, devices reached the borders of neighboring states including Wyoming, Nebraska, Oklahoma, New Mexico and Utah.

In Florida on 18 April, devices returned to all parts of the peninsula and up to the Georgia border. In Wisconsin on 24 April, devices returned to smaller towns like Green Bay and Wausau, and the borders of Minnesota and Illinois.

Following the initial wave of anti-lockdown protests in April, epidemiologists warned that they could lead to a new surge in cases.

In North Carolina in late April, one of the leaders of the state’s anti-lockdown protests tested positive for Covid-19 but said she would attend future rallies.

Dr Rob Davidson, executive director of the Committee to Protect Medicare, said that although “it’s hard to draw a straight line between devices, individuals at these protests, and cases”, the data suggests that the protests may be epidemiologically significant events.

“The behavior we’re seeing at protests carries a high risk of infection. We can see protesters are going from a highly concentrated event and then dispersing widely,” he added.

Davidson, who has run for Congress as a Democrat, said that neither he nor his advocacy group were currently affiliated with the Democratic party. The group is made up of more than 300 “doctors who are concerned that the healthcare for their patients has become unaffordable”.

In a series of widely shared videos and threads on Twitter, Davidson has criticized Trump, and attempted to dispel what he calls the “distrust in public health” which “Donald Trump has fomented in his movement”.