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Trump has drawn criticism for continuing to organize events with large, tight crowds in states experiencing epidemics. Many attendees, including Trump, did not wear masks.
Joe Biden’s campaign seized the results on Saturday as proof that Trump did not take the ooronavirus pandemic seriously. “It’s even claimed hundreds of lives and triggered thousands of cases with rallies of super spreaders that only serve his own ego,” Biden spokesman Andrew Gates said.
Former President Barack Obama also cited the study on Saturday during an appearance with Biden in Michigan.
Trump campaign spokeswoman Courtney Parella said attendees at the rallies had their temperatures checked and were given masks that they were required to wear. Hand sanitizer is also provided.
“Americans have the right to come together under the First Amendment to hear from the President of the United States, and we are taking strong precautions for our campaign events,” Parella said.
Michael Mina, an epidemiologist at Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, said the study is reminiscent of research that tried to quantify the impact of a large motorcycle rally held in Sturgis, SD, in August on Covid-19 spanned the summer. Although the design of the Stanford study appears correct, the methods are “not particularly robust,” he warned.
“There are better ways to look at this data through epidemic lenses of infectious disease,” Mina said. “It offers a data point, but nothing that I would like to draw solid conclusions from. It is also so overtly political that it is difficult to distinguish whether decisions have been made on the basis of perhaps unrecognized biases.
But Eleanor Murray, assistant professor of epidemiology at the Boston University School of Public Health, said the paper “applies an appropriate method with good controls for robustness and sensitivity.”
“If the fundamental underlying assumption is realistic, then the answer is probably something to be trusted,” Murray said.
More than 9 million people in the United States have been infected with Covid-19 and the virus has claimed the lives of more than 230,000.
Senior government health officials, including White House Coronavirus Task Force coordinator Deborah Birx and HHS testing czar Brett Giroir, have warned Americans that precautions such as social distancing and masks were needed as cases continue to climb to record levels before the winter months.
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