Researchers tracking smartphone data say they recently made a disturbing discovery: For the first time since states began implementing stay-at-home orders in mid-March to limit the spread of the novel coronavirus, Americans are staying home less.
The nationwide shift during the week of April 13 was relatively slight. However, any loss of momentum, particularly when stay-in-place orders remain in effect across most of the country, has some public health experts worried about "quarantine fatigue." Any increase in travel, they say, is premature when staying home remains the most effective way to limit the spread of the virus until widespread testing and contact tracing become available.
"We saw something we hoped wasn't happening, but it's there," said Lei Zhang, lead researcher and director of the Maryland Transportation Institute at the University of Maryland. "It seems collectively we're getting a little tired. It looks like people are loosening up on their own to travel more."
Zhang said he anticipates the number of people staying home will continue to drop as some states begin allowing businesses, beaches and other public facilities to reopen. That process began last week in South Carolina and Georgia.
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Public health experts say any data showing widespread public resolve or cooperation beginning to wane is noteworthy. Because this is the first U.S. pandemic in 100 years, they don't know how long people are willing to tolerate cabin fever for the greater good.
They say they're not surprised, however, that a slide occurred in a week that saw the first highly publicized challenges to such orders by protesters and President Donald Trump, who tweeted his support to "liberate" states from shutdowns. The White House also released federal guidelines that week for states seeking to reopen their economies. And a growing number of governors, including in Texas, Minnesota and Vermont, set dates for when they planned to gradually lift restrictions.
By April 17, the researchers found, the share of people presumed to have stayed home -- meaning their phones didn't move at least a mile that day -- declined from a national average of 33 percent to 31 percent, compared with the previous Friday. That came after six weeks of the staying-home percentage increasing or holding steady.
The number of work trips remained about the same. However, the average number of personal daily trips grew to 2.5 per person, up from 2.4 the previous Friday -- a 4 percent increase. Trips between counties and states also increased.
Because the study's sample size is so large -- more than 100 million cellphones observed monthly -- even slight changes are statistically significant, Zhang said.
Dr. Wilbur Chen, an associate professor at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, said it's too soon to know whether the findings reveal a one-week blip or the start of a trend. Chen, a member of Republican Gov. Larry Hogan's covid-19 task force in Maryland, said he's keeping a close eye on the data, but researchers won't know for several weeks if more travel led to more coronavirus hospitalizations or deaths -- the two most reliable measures of the virus's spread.
"But it all makes sense," Chen said. "If people are out and about, there's more risk of transmission, and when there's transmission, you have more cases of hospitalizations and deaths."
George Rutherford, an epidemiology professor at the University of California at San Francisco, said he's concerned to hear that more people are venturing out while infections remain on the rise in much of the country.
"We're going to have to do this carefully," Rutherford said of states beginning to ease restrictions. "Letting people decide for themselves because they're bored is not a good way to do it ... . This is not the time to be letting up."
REASONS TO QUIT
Experts have theories about why the week of April 13, the most recent data available, became a tipping point. Many homebound Americans hit the mental milestone of the fifth week, technically entering a second month, with no clear end in sight.
Even with the boom in video calls and virtual cocktail hours, they say, feelings of loneliness and isolation continue to mount. Balmy spring temperatures also probably drew people out, particularly in warmer regions where a hot, sticky summer will soon descend.
It's also no coincidence, they say, that resolve would begin to wane amid the Trump-supported protests, even as most Americans tell pollsters they support stay-at-home requirements.
Lorien Abroms, a public health professor at George Washington University, said it doesn't help that the public has received "mixed messages," including Trump's "tacit support" of the protesters.
"I think the message is getting out that you can give in to your fatigue and say 'It's enough,'" Abroms said.
Some people also might have mistakenly believed they could safely start bending the stay-at-home rules, experts say, when some governors began to publicly announce how and when their economies would begin to reopen.
"People can feel it's coming, so they get more antsy," said Susan Hassig, an associate professor of epidemiology at Tulane University. "It's kind of like a kid before Christmas."
A Section on 04/27/2020