The list of rallies is from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_post-election_Donald_Trump_rallies where I have added the county, its population, where available estimates of the number of attendees, plots of the daily confirmed cases on the host and adjacent counties, and some observations.
Method
We are interested in whether some of these events may have served as 'super-spreader' events.
The raw data we analyze is the Johns Hopkins University daily confirmed cases data for the US available at: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/CSSEGISandData/COVID-19/master/csse_covid_19_data/csse_covid_19_time_series/time_series_covid19_confirmed_US.csv
The question is whether there was a significant rise in daily confirmed Covid-19 cases after the rally, in particular in the 2-14 days following the rally (according to the CDC, Sep 18, 2020: "Symptoms may appear 2-14 days after you were exposed to COVID-19").
The social distancing at the rallies was minimal, and not everyone wore masks, see the photos below taken at the Oshkosh rally.
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Results
The links "Details in Excel file" in the table below provide access to Excel worksheets and charts of daily confirmed cases for each county plus identification of the event's starting date followed by a 14 day incubation period.
On clicking the "Details in Excel file" link it will prove access to the Excel workbook. On opening the workbook, open the Chart1 tab. You can move the mouse over a chart's line to get the date, value and county for the line.
Date of rally | City | County | County population (attendees) | State | Venue | Possible impact of rally on daily Confirmed cases in adjacent counties | Observations |
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| Monday, August 17, 2020[110] | Mankato | Blue Earth County | 64,013 | MN | Mankato Regional Airport | Blue Earth sees a rise in cases 10 days after the rally. Brown sees a rise in cases 26 days after the rally. Faribault sees a rise in cases around 12-14 days after the rally. Le Sueur sees a rise in cases 3-4 days after the rally that rises to a peak after 11-12 days after the rally and then falls. We assume this not likely to be | |
| Monday, August 17, 2020[111] | Oshkosh | Winnebago County | 171907 (several hundred) | WI | Oshkosh airway | Fond Du Lac, Outagamie and Winnebago's daily confirmed cases roughly doubled 12 days after the rally, and continued to rise. Follwing the nd of the 14 day incubation period there is a pronounced rise in daily confirmed cases for all counties. | |
| Tuesday, August 18, 2020[112] | Yuma | Yuma County | 195795 | AZ | Joe Foss Hangar | No apparent impact. | |
| Thursday, August 20, 2020[113] | Old Forge | Lackawanna County | 209674 | PA | Mariotti Building Products | There are significant rises in the number of cases in the 2-14 days after the event on 8/20/20.
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| Friday, August 28, 2020[114] | Londonderry | Rockingham County | 309769 (1400) | NH | Pro Star Aviation | There is a rise in confirmed cases for all counties except Essex, 5-14 days following the rally. Essex starts to climb 22 days after the rally. | |
| Thursday, September 3, 2020[115] | Latrobe | Westmoreland County | 348899 | PA | Arnold Palmer Regional Airport | Steep rise of cases in Indiana county, no apparent increase in other counties. | |
| Tuesday, September 8, 2020[116] | Winston-Salem | Forsyth County | 382295 | NC | Smith Reynolds Airport | There is a steep rise in daily confirmed cases following the 14 day incubation period. | |
| Thursday, September 10, 2020[117] | Freeland | Saginaw County | 190539 | MI | Avflight Saginaw | There is a slow rise in daily confirmed cases starting in the 14 day incubation period and continuing afterwards | |
| Saturday, September 12, 2020[118] | Indoors | Douglas County | 48905 | NV | Minden-Tahoe Airport | There is a rise in cases in 4 of the 5 counties starting a few days after the rally. | |
| Sunday, September 13, 2020[119] | Henderson | Clark County | 2.28 million (5600) | NV | Xtreme Manufacturing | Clark, Mohave, and Nye counties all see a rise in confirmed cases starting between the 17th and 20th of September. | |
| Friday, September 18, 2020[120] | Bemidji | Beltrami County | 47188 | MN | Bemidji Aviation Services | There is a pronounced rise in the daily confirmed cases that starts in the incubation period and continues afterwards. | |
| Friday, September 18, 2020[121] | Mosinee | Marathon County | 135692 | WI | Central Wisconsin Aviation | In this case, the rise in cases starts before the rally. |
The Excel files come from a library of Excel workbooks illustrating the impact of COVID-19 on many different areas of the world.
Possibly Impacted counties
We looked at the adjacent counties in the same state or neighboring state (using https://gisgeography.com/us-county-map/) where we see the following counties.
Douglas County NV 9/12/20 | Clark County NV 9/13/20 | Winnebago WI 8/17/20 | Blue Earth MN 8/17/20 | Lackawanna PA 8/20/20 | Rockingham NH 8/26/20 |
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| Marathon County WI 9/17/2020 | Yuma county AZ 8/18/2020 | Westmoreland PA 9/3/2020 | Forsyth NC 9/8/2020 | Saginaw MI 9/10/2020 | Beltrami County MN 9/18/2020 |
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| Cumberland NC 9/19/20 | Montgomery OH 9/21/20 | Fulton & Lucas OH 9/21/2020 | Allegheny PA 9/22/2020 | Duval FL 9/24/20 | |
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Also see
- https://time.com/5865890/oklahoma-covid-19-trump-tulsa-rally/
- https://www.axios.com/trump-rally-fined-violating-covid-guidelines-1566236b-0177-4407-b139-a7f69c11db66.html
- https://thenevadaindependent.com/article/nevada-health-officials-predict-uptick-in-covid-19-cases-following-labor-day-weekend-crowds-trump-rallies
- https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/investigations/2020/10/22/trumps-campaign-made-stops-nationwide-then-coronavirus-cases-surged/3679534001/