30,000 infected at Trump’s public meeting – NRK Urix – Foreign...

In the study, which was released on Friday, the researchers took a closer look at 18 of Trump’s public meetings from June to September. It is important to emphasize that the study has not yet been evaluated by other professionals.

The study shows that the infection rate often increased markedly in places where the election meeting was held, compared with nearby cities where there were no such meetings.

Increase infection rate

The researchers have used a statistical method to calculate the infection rate associated with the 18 public meetings. Speeches are thus not based on individual cases that can be traced directly back to an individual meeting. Instead, the researchers have followed the infection development in a quarter of the county for up to ten weeks after a quarter of the election meeting.

Representatives of the health authorities in the states where such meetings have been arranged, emphasize that it is not possible to trace a quarter of individual cases of infection back to special meetings, writes The New York Times.

It is expected that the Republicans will point out that the survey is not peer-reviewed and unreliable. The Democrats will probably claim that the president has put the health of the participants at stake.

It may be objected that cases of infection increase everywhere, that the participants in public meetings in many cases travel far, and that infection detection is not always possible.

Compare with 200 other counties

The survey is not based on specific infection tracing after the public meeting. Professor B. Douglas Bernheim and his colleagues at Stanford University have used some form of regression analysis to produce numbers.

They compared 18 counties where Trump had held his rallies, with 200 other counties with similar demographic composition and the same distribution picture prior to the meeting.

The first two meetings that the researchers studied, in Tulsa and in Phoenix, were an indoor meeting. The other 16 were held in the open air. In Tulsa, there was a boom in infection in the weeks that followed, without the cases of infection being traced directly to the public meeting.

From another meeting in Bemidji, Minnesota in September, local authorities have tracked down 16 infections. The same day Joe Biden held a meeting in Duluth, and there was a case of infection afterwards.

– Over 700 extra deaths

Based on the calculation model, the researchers calculate that the meeting led to an increased infection rate of over 250 new cases per 100,000 inhabitants. For all 18 meetings, they concluded that the public meeting probably led to more than 30,000 cases of infection.

They also write that the meeting probably led to more than 700 deaths, but it is emphasized that the deaths did not necessarily affect people who attended the meeting physically.

– The local communities where the Trump meeting has taken place, have paid a high price when it comes to illness and death, the researchers conclude according to the New York Daily News.

Since the study was completed in September, the president has held several dozen similar meetings. Only this last election weekend and until Monday, he held 14 such election meetings.

The White House rejects

White House spokesman Judd Deere told The New York Times that the study was “a politically motivated model based on erroneous conclusions that are meant to make Trump supporters feel ashamed.”

– As the president has said, the cure can not be worse than the disease, he says.

They emphasize that one must follow the best advice, at the same time as there must be room for personal freedom in the effort to limit the spread of the coronavirus.