Using data analytics to get to the bottom of relationships in the real world is tricky business. It is well known by that "correlation is not causation". Here is an animation I developed back in 2020 that attempted to provide color on whether large in-person political rallies held by candidate Donald Trump contributed significantly to the spread of COVID-19 and the resulting death toll from the pandemic.
Here is the first one showing just the state of Pennsylvania. Square bars are counties and number of cases reported by the concurrent Johns Hopkins tracking site that was in operation at the time. The height and color of the bar indicate levels of reported infections.
The date of the analysis is listed and progresses as the animation goes on. The tall black bars appear (first on 8/20/2020) at the location and date of Trump political rallies. To my eyes it appears that these seed the infections in the rural counties nearby, but everyone can draw their own inferences.
What to my eyes appears to be a huge inflection point occurs on Election day 11/3/2020 when the campaign encouraged voters to come out in person and stand in line to vote as part of an effort to cast doubt on the validity of mail in ballots.
I have one of these for the entire country if there is interest. One can argue the numbers but over a million people appear to have died in the COVID-19 pandemic ... and asking what could have been done differently to mitigate this number seems like something reasonable to discuss
#facts #freedom #politics