The researchers said it was to study the impact of election rallies organized by Trump.
New York:
About 18 US President Donald Trump’s election rallies are estimated to have led to more than 30,000 confirmed cases of the coronavirus and likely resulted in more than 700 deaths, a new study by researchers at Stanford University said, noting that the communities where Trump’s rallies were held “paid a high price in terms of illness and death.”
In the study titled “ The Effects of Large Group Meetings on the Spread of COVID-19: The Case of Trump Rallies, ” researchers concluded 18 rallies organized by Trump between June 20 and September 22, “finally resulted in over 30,000 additional confirmed cases of COVID-19 “and” likely led to over 700 deaths “, which are not necessarily among the participants.
“Our analysis strongly supports the warnings and recommendations of public health officials regarding the risk of transmission of COVID-19 during large group gatherings, particularly when the degree of compliance with guidelines regarding the use of masks and social distancing is weak. The communities in which Trump rallies took place and paid a high price in terms of illness and death, ”the researchers said in the study.
Reacting to a Twitter post on the study, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden said, “President Trump doesn’t care about you. He doesn’t even care about his own supporters.”
The study, released Friday, noted that more than 8.7 million Americans have contracted COVID-19, resulting in more than 225,000 deaths.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have indicated that large in-person events, especially in settings where attendees do not wear masks or practice social distancing, pose a substantial risk of additional contagion.
“There are reasons to fear that such gatherings could serve as ‘mass-market events’, seriously undermining efforts to control the pandemic,” he said.
The researchers said the aim of the study was to shed light on these questions by studying the impact of election rallies organized by Trump’s campaign between June 20 and September 30.
The researchers said Trump’s rallies had several “distinguishing features” that lend themselves to this investigation, adding that attendees at Trump’s rallies numbered in the thousands and sometimes in the tens of thousands.
They noted that the gatherings were not geographically ubiquitous and that the degree of compliance with guidelines for mask use and social distancing was low “in part because the Trump campaign minimized the risk of infection. This feature increases the risk that a rally could become a “superspreader event.”
The researchers said to capture the effects of subsequent contagion within affected communities, their analysis encompasses up to 10 weeks after gathering for each event.
“Our method is based on a collection of regression models, one for each event, that capture the relationships between post-event outcomes and pre-event characteristics, including demographics and trajectory of COVID-19 cases, in similar counties. “
(This story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
