Can you guess which of the 51 states of America are seriously obeying guidelines to stay away from crowded recreational spaces and those that do not?
Tech giant Google is aiming to provide us with a clearer picture of where people go and what they do in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.
In a blog post last Apr 3, Google launched its COVID-19 Community Mobility Reports, which look into more detailed location data it tracks to boost its ad-targeting and marketing strategy so as to highlight cumulative changes in population movements across the globe.
The reports aim to help public health and government officials and understand mobility shifts that could help "understand changes in essential trips that can shape recommendations on business hours or inform delivery service offerings.
Google added that the insights are based on aggregated, anonymized sets of data from users who have turned on the Location History setting, which is off by default.
To take advantage of the reports, our research team collected all datasets for every state in the U.S. We focused on mobility changes in three main categories: Retail & Recreation, Parks and Workplaces to identify the top states that defy and obey guidelines to stay away from crowded places.
Retail & Recreation refers to mobility trends for places like restaurants, cafes, shopping centers, theme parks, museums, libraries, and movie theatres. Parks cover mobility trends for places like national parks, public beaches, marinas, dog parks, plazas, and public gardens. Lastly, workplaces point to mobility trends for places of work.
Interestingly this is what we found out:
*** We are currently experiencing technical glitch that might prevent you from seeing the table below. For compiled data, please refer to this link: US GLOBAL MOBILITY TRENDS
**Reports updated Apr 2 at 12:21 PM GMT+8. Data is from approximately 2-3 days prior.
Arkansas with 738 COVID-19 cases so far is consistently at the top 5 in the 3 categories while District of Columbia with slightly higher count of 757 deterred from going to recreational places.
Hawaii with only 296 cases also seemed to be taking the guidelines seriously with 64%drop in mobility to parks, including beaches.
Are Google Mobility Reports Accurate?
While governments around the world scramble for data and tools to help them shape policies concerning the coronavirus pandemic, civil liberty and privacy advocates were quick to voice concerns regarding the impacts of such data-driven efforts on individual rights. Others also shared concerns on its accuracy.
Google's movement data is probably more reliable than third-party location data.
However, looking at their Austria report, I can't believe visits to 'retail & recreation' places have decreased only 87%. All those places are closed, staff is mostly absent.https://t.co/Dc1BsL5ey0 pic.twitter.com/7uOB3mTLP5 — Wolfie Christl (@WolfieChristl) April 3, 2020
COVID-19 cases in the U.S.
Based on data from the New York Times, as of this writing, the U.S. now has 276,382 cases and 7,122 deaths.
Countries with the highest cases are New York (102,870), New Jersey (29,895), Michigan (12,670), California (12,569), Massachusetts (10,402), Louisiana (10,297), Florida (10,260), Illinois (8,904), Pennsylvania (8,420), and Washington (6,966).
