Speaker 1: It's Tuesday a I'm Oscar Ramrrors from the Daily Dive
Speaker 1: podcast in Los Angeles, and this is your daily coronavirus update.
Speaker 1: The quarantine fatigue is real. Researchers analyzing smartphone data are
Speaker 1: finding that more Americans are venturing out despite stay at
Speaker 1: home orders. Work trips have remained about the same, but
Speaker 1: personal trips are starting to increase, and so were trips
Speaker 1: between counties and state lines. There's also some confusion in
Speaker 1: states announced plans to open back up. Some think they
Speaker 1: can start easing up on staying at home. The US
Speaker 1: has never ordered so many to stay at home all
Speaker 1: at once, and we might be seeing the limits that
Speaker 1: citizens are willing to handle. Katherine Shaver, reporter at the
Speaker 1: Washington Post, joins us for how people are over quarantine.
Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us, Katherine, good to be here, Thank you.
Speaker 1: I wanted to talk about quarantine fatigue. It's real, and
Speaker 1: researchers right now are finding that Americans are starting to
Speaker 1: venture out a little bit more despite a lot of
Speaker 1: stay at home orders. A quick story case and point
Speaker 1: on all this. I live in California, in Los Angeles,
Speaker 1: and we've seen this happen across the country. In some
Speaker 1: other states, but local officials have made these efforts to
Speaker 1: keep public beaches, parks, and big open spaces accessible for
Speaker 1: people for mental and physical well being. This past weekend,
Speaker 1: we had a heat wave and people went out to
Speaker 1: the beach in droves in Orange County specifically, the whole
Speaker 1: state isn't open up like that, and we saw a
Speaker 1: bunch of pictures. The governor of California kind of was
Speaker 1: shaking his finger at people, saying that's not the way
Speaker 1: to do it. But people are getting tired of staying
Speaker 1: at home, and as this thing keeps going, we don't
Speaker 1: have a lot of end dates in sight. People are
Speaker 1: getting restless. So Captain tell us a little bit more
Speaker 1: about this. Because researchers have been tracking smartphone data to
Speaker 1: see how people are staying at home or not. They've
Speaker 1: been looking at the location data from our smartphone apps,
Speaker 1: and basically, on any day when a phone travels more
Speaker 1: than a mile, they assume that that phone is not
Speaker 1: staying home that day that it made a trip. And
Speaker 1: they've been looking at this since the middle of March.
Speaker 1: When they stay at homeowners began to effect and the
Speaker 1: data is aggregated, it's anonymous or not tracking where you
Speaker 1: and your cell phone are individually going. But as they
Speaker 1: started to look at it, the percentage of people staying
Speaker 1: home with the percentage of their phone staying home grew
Speaker 1: gradually for several weeks after mid March, and then a
Speaker 1: kind of plateaued at about thirty three to percent of
Speaker 1: the country on average. But what really worried them was
Speaker 1: starting the week of April, they noticed that the percent
Speaker 1: started to decline, and in fact, by the end of
Speaker 1: the week April seventeen, it had dropped at on average nationwide.
Speaker 1: So they're really worried about this shift and momentum. And
Speaker 1: the reason they're really worried is it's not like people
Speaker 1: started going back to work. The percentage of trips that
Speaker 1: were non work trips pretty much stayed the same. But
Speaker 1: the number of trips that people were taking for personal reasons,
Speaker 1: going out to the store, maybe going you know, driving
Speaker 1: out to apart to take a walk, those are the
Speaker 1: trips that went up, and so that's what really concerned them.
Speaker 1: What there was this shift and momentum of people who
Speaker 1: apparently are getting restless, board lonely, and really starting to
Speaker 1: venture out more. And it's pretty noteworthy. I mean, really,
Speaker 1: this is the first pandemic that many of us have
Speaker 1: experienced that you know, everybody always goes back to the
Speaker 1: Spanish flu of nineteen eighteen. That's so long ago, and
Speaker 1: really this hasn't been done in the modern era, and
Speaker 1: nobody knows how much people will tolerate. There's other countries
Speaker 1: that have lockdown orders that have happened before, but the
Speaker 1: United States doesn't really do that, and we don't know
Speaker 1: how much people will take. And you mentioned some of
Speaker 1: the numbers. You know, a dip from like thirty four
Speaker 1: or thirty three down it doesn't seem like much, but
Speaker 1: these sample sizes are so big because they're looking at
Speaker 1: so much data that any movement there is kind of significant.
Speaker 1: And what I found was really interesting was the public
Speaker 1: health experts I spoke with said, we know how long
Speaker 1: people are willing to maybe stay quarantined in their house.
Speaker 1: Like during H one and one, some people were quarantined.
Speaker 1: During Stars one, some people were quarantined, but usually that's
Speaker 1: for about fourteen days to twenty one days max. And
Speaker 1: those are usually such targeted quarantines that local health officials
Speaker 1: can check it with folks every day. And how are
Speaker 1: you feeling just a reminder you need to stay isolated,
Speaker 1: keep going, and that's how they prevent quarantine fatigue in
Speaker 1: those situations. But you're right, nobody has any idea how
Speaker 1: on a nationwide scale, when you don't have somebody calling
Speaker 1: you every day and saying keep going, Nobody knows how
Speaker 1: long people are going to be willing to put up
Speaker 1: with cavin fever for the greater good or to protect
Speaker 1: my family. So they're very intrigued by all of this
Speaker 1: and what do they need to do to kind of
Speaker 1: keep people going into these extraordinary circumstances. It's so tough
Speaker 1: even for health officials and local government officials. It would
Speaker 1: be almost impossible, probably the wrong way to approach it
Speaker 1: if they said, you know what, guys were really going
Speaker 1: to be locked down until June. That's why we're getting
Speaker 1: these kind of well the orders extended until May fifteenth.
Speaker 1: The order is extended to because if you just say, hey,
Speaker 1: we're gone for two months, people are gonna start rebelling
Speaker 1: initially and then beyond that, you know, you see some
Speaker 1: other states starting to reopen thing. There could be a
Speaker 1: little bit of that kind of jealousy thing almost like
Speaker 1: why can they go out and play and we can't.
Speaker 1: So I'm sure you're gonna start seeing this a lot
Speaker 1: more everywhere, and the confusion that so's also some governors
Speaker 1: are starting to say, well, we're formulating those plans, we
Speaker 1: will start opening soon, and people are probably taking that
Speaker 1: as well. I can start easing my own restrictions. Now
Speaker 1: I'm wearing my face mask. Let's just go out now.
Speaker 1: I spoke with one public health expertise said, it's kind
Speaker 1: of like a kid right before Christmas. You start hearing
Speaker 1: about governors talking about reopening economies, and people start thinking, well, really,
Speaker 1: how bad could it be. We'll put on my face mask,
Speaker 1: I'll stay six feet away from people. But they say
Speaker 1: they're really concerned because the more people are venturing out,
Speaker 1: the more likely they are to be in places like
Speaker 1: grocery stores or drug stores. And you can do all
Speaker 1: you can to try to limit your exposure, but you
Speaker 1: are still increasing the risk of transmission. Beyond that, it
Speaker 1: takes a little bit of time to gather the data
Speaker 1: and then crunch the numbers. We won't know for a
Speaker 1: couple of weeks. Let's say if these people that have
Speaker 1: started moving a little bit early might have come down
Speaker 1: with coronavirus, increased number of cases is or hospitalizations or
Speaker 1: death We won't know that for some time as well.
Speaker 1: The medical experts I talked to said they're very curious
Speaker 1: about whether the increase in travel is going to lead
Speaker 1: to an increase in hospitalizations and deaths. They say they
Speaker 1: can't really look at whether, at least for an increase
Speaker 1: in just cases overall, because testing is still so limited
Speaker 1: that that's not really a reliable indicator. But it's going
Speaker 1: to take at least several weeks to start saying if
Speaker 1: more people end up in the hospital or more people
Speaker 1: end up dying, and then they might be able to
Speaker 1: look back and say, hey, that's when that county started
Speaker 1: to have people venture out, or that's when that state
Speaker 1: lifted restrictions and people started going out. About one last
Speaker 1: note about how people are moving. Personal daily trips had
Speaker 1: increased about four and then trips between counties and states
Speaker 1: also increased. And basically if you're out or you haven't
Speaker 1: moved for more than ten minutes or so, you're kind
Speaker 1: of still classified as staying at home. But everything is
Speaker 1: basically starting to increase in some form or another. The
Speaker 1: way they say that we're going to start saying this.
Speaker 1: It's not like people hit the wall and us run
Speaker 1: screaming out of their homes and saying, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: I'm going back to life as normal. It's really more
Speaker 1: of kind of a slippery slope where we start bending
Speaker 1: the rules. Or maybe a few weeks ago, we would
Speaker 1: go to the grocery store on Monday and we would
Speaker 1: get everything we needed for the next eight days and
Speaker 1: we wouldn't go back out again. But maybe now by Friday,
Speaker 1: my bananas are starting to get a little brown, or
Speaker 1: I'm running a little low on ice cream, and I'm
Speaker 1: also thinking, you know, I've been stuck at home for
Speaker 1: five days. I just want to get a breath of
Speaker 1: fresh air, change of scenery. I'm just going to run
Speaker 1: out to Target and maybe making another run. So now
Speaker 1: I've made two trips in my week instead of one.
Speaker 1: And that's what they're really concerned about. We all just
Speaker 1: start loosening up just a little bit, and that's what
Speaker 1: they're afraid of. An aggregate could become a real problem.
Speaker 1: The numbers are starting to show it, and itcnotally. I
Speaker 1: can tell you that that quarantine fatigue is real. People
Speaker 1: are just telling me all over the place they're itching
Speaker 1: to get out and making these shorter trips, and and
Speaker 1: doing it more frequently. So we'll have to be vigilant
Speaker 1: with all of this to stop the spread. But it's hard.
Speaker 1: It really is. Catherine Shaver, reporter, The Washington Post. Thank
Speaker 1: you very much for joining us, Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: I'm Oscar Ramirez and this has been your daily coronavirus update.
Speaker 1: Don't forget that. For today's big news stories, you can
Speaker 1: check me out on the Daily Dive podcast every Monday
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