SAN JOSE, Calif. — A new Stanford study concludes that Trump rallies resulted in more than 30,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19, and likely caused more than 700 deaths among attendees and their close contacts.
“The communities in which Trump rallies took place paid a high price in terms of disease and death,” the research concludes, conducted by economists from the university’s Institute for Economic Policy Research.
The new analysis, which is not peer-reviewed, studies the trajectory of the pandemic in counties that were the sites of 18 Trump campaign rallies last summer in cities such as Phoenix, Tulsa and Pittsburgh. It compared case counts before and after rallies, as well as case counts in rally counties to counties without rallies.
Although published in the waning days of the campaigns, it asserts that its goal was scientific. It compared the number of confirmed cases in rally counties with matched counties where there was no rally — revealing the effect of large group gatherings on viral spread.
