COVID-19 cases in the Capitol are only the tip of the iceberg

When thousands of insurgents descended on Washington, DC, from across the country in early January, it had a super-spreading event of COVID-19: people close by, chanting and cheering, all unmasking. U.S. lawmakers have tested positive for the virus following Trump’s riots, and the cases may just be the tip of the iceberg. The increase in activity, which thwarts all public health guidelines, could lead to outbreaks in the city, in prisons and jails and across the country.

However, determining exactly how much damage the riots caused would be a huge epidemiological challenge. Under the best of circumstances, it’s hard to follow superspreaders. If the opportunity is populated by people who are unlikely to cooperate with officials and the number of cases is already sky high, the task becomes even more difficult.

“The entire U.S. is currently a superspreader event,” said Andrew Noymer, an epidemiologist at Infectious Disease at the University of California, Irvine.

The detection of the disease through the halls of Congress, where it affects public figures, is clearer: so far, six members of Congress have reported positive test results after the riots when they were forced to pack in small rooms for safety. (A seventh test was positive on the day of the riots and was already infected while they were going on.) Three Democrats who have COVID-19 explicitly blamed it on nearby circles and Republican colleagues who refused to wearing masks.

Outside the Capitol building, the disease probably spread as well. The far-right groups that gathered for the riots do not take the pandemic seriously. “Part of the MAGA riot platform is a complete denial of science, public health, and the need for things like masks,” said Eric Reinhart, a researcher studying health and incarceration at Harvard University’s Department of Anthropology.

Among the thousands who traveled from across the country to Washington, DC, people gathered outside without masks, without masks, broke into the Capitol building and returned to hotels, where they sit unmasked in portals. They were in danger of spreading COVID-19 among themselves, but also to people they encountered throughout the city, including DC workers. When they returned home, they could also have sown new outbreaks in their own communities.

Photo by Tasos Katopodis / Getty Images

COVID-19 is rising across the country, so everyone is at greater risk of infection than they were at any other time in the past year. But because of their behavior, the rioters were likely to be more infected and spread their infection than the general population, Reinhart says.

This is one of the main differences between these riots and protests against police brutality during the summer (which was also not violent and did not try to undermine the democratic process). Most people did not travel to take part in the protests, but gathered where they lived, and the vast majority of protesters wore masks and were careful to maintain distance. The main risks of COVID-19 in protests against police brutality come from police officers who lure protesters in a close neighborhood and have arrested thousands.

“People were taken in road cars or big pickups with ten, 20 or 50 people,” Reinhart says. “Then they are detained in prisons, often with 20 or 30 people in a confined space.”

In contrast, fewer than 100 people were arrested in or after leaving DC in connection with the Capitol riot. For legal and public safety reasons, more arrests are likely to be justified, Reinhart says. But for public health, he was relieved to see such a low number.

“Thank God they are not currently throwing thousands of people in DC and Virginia in jail because it would be an absolute disaster, not only for the inmates, but for everyone as well,” Reinhart says. COVID-19 spreads faster in a prison or jail than outside. When the virus has taken hold in one of the facilities, it also travels to the surrounding community, while guards arrive daily and go home and when people are brought in and released. In Illinois, people who ride in and out of Cook County Jail accounted for about 15 percent of COVID-19 cases in Chicago, Reinhart’s research found.

The small number of rioters arrested may have blunted the element of public health risk following the riots. But hardline Trump supporters, such as those seen at the Capitol, tend to be anti-masks and are less likely to follow public health guidelines than the general population. The chances of the few dozen rioters arrested having COVID-19 and bringing it to jail may be higher than the typical prisoner. Even with lower numbers, it is reasonable to speculate that rioters could pose a risk to prisons and prisons, Reinhart says.

It could take weeks for epidemiologists to put together the full impact of the Capitol riots on COVID-19 distribution, if at all. It takes careful detective work to quantify the ripple effects of an event, Noymer says. There are two strategies that researchers can use. One is to find the genetic sequence of the virus that infected someone who became ill after the riots. They can follow it as it jumps from person to person. This is how experts traced the spread of the virus from a conference in Boston last year, and found that about 245,000 cases could be traced back to the single event. It is unlikely that this will be a good strategy for the riots, as it depends on the people who were at the event and agree to participate in research. “Congratulations on having these people work together,” Noymer said.

Another strategy is to measure the changes in the number of cases in an area before and after an event, and model how much the event is likely to have contributed to any change. This is the basis for a study analyzing the impact of an August motorcycle race in Sturgis, South Dakota, on the spread of COVID-19. The motorcycle rally occurred when COVID-19 cases in the United States were much lower than now. The disruption of the reasons for infections and the detection of bumps in the numbers will now be more difficult after the riots in Capitol when more than 200,000 cases are reported every day.

No method is perfect, and both rely on modeling and estimation. It may be a useful way to compile the numbers to conceptualize the damage that an event like the riots at the Capitol did, but it is not the only way to know that something bad has happened. The riots were clearly a major event and based on every measure of public health, probably spread COVID-19. Experts do not need to quantify exactly how much it has increased the spread of the virus, to be sure that it matters and that it is dangerous. “We don’t have to put a number on it,” Noymer says. “This is a fool’s errand.”