Those protests have resulted in some reforms in how cities and school districts use police departments, as well as the removal of some symbols seen as emblematic of the country’s systemic racism.
One thing they did not appear to have caused, however, is an uptick in COVID-19 cases. The research paper Black Lives Matter Protests, Social Distancing, and COVID-19 looked at virus data from protests between May 26 and June 20, found “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,” the authors of the National Bureau of Economic Research paper wrote.
That lines up with what others have seen in various cities.
“I have not seen any peer-reviewed research linking outdoor protests (or really any major outdoor events) to the surge here in Texas,” said Rodney Rohde, PhD, an associate dean for research at Texas State’s College of Health Professions who focuses on public health microbiology.
In New York City, where the protests led to a citywide curfew, the story was similar. Jeffrey Shaman, PhD, director of Columbia University’s climate and health program, has been leading modeling projects over the past several months to project how the virus is likely to spread. In the wake of the protests, he did some modeling to try to understand how much they might contribute to the spread.
The protests were outdoors, mostly during the day, and appeared to have a high proportion of people wearing masks. The models ran three scenarios based on how much these factors might have been able to reduce transmission: most, least, and moderate.
“If we saw a moderate-sized reduction in transmissibility, we still would have seen a small spike,” Sharman said. “But we didn’t see that.”
There are a couple of elements to that logic. The biggest factor is the protests were outdoors. There was also the fact that people were largely moving and exposed to the sun and wind.
“In general, being outdoors does help, due to fresh circulation of air and the antiviral effects of the UV in sunlight, as well as the virus’s fragile nature with desiccation,” Rohde said. “This doesn’t mean the virus can’t be transmitted outdoors, but it’s certainly better than being in enclosed, indoor spaces with lots of people and low air turnover.”
Looking at the relationship between rising coronavirus cases in states with greater protest participation, researchers wrote: “There is a clear and significant negative correlation between the percentage of a state’s population who reported protesting and the subsequent increase in cases of COVID-19.”
In other words, the demonstrations “were very unlikely to be” the big driver behind the surge in infections in June and July, says David Lazer, university distinguished professor of political science and computer and information sciences at Northeastern, and one of the researchers who conducted the study.
“We’re not saying the protests didn’t cause more cases, an assessment that will require substantial, additional analyses” he added. “It’s just that if they were the key drivers, then you would expect the places that had the most protesters to have the biggest surge, and, in fact, the opposite is the case.”