DATA SHOWS JUNEAU WAS MOST COMPLIANT WITH MANDATES
Google has been analyzing data from around the country to see how social distancing and stay-home orders are working out between late March and early May.
Alaska’s major communities provide enough data to show how visits and time spent at different geo-located places changed compared to a baseline before the state shutdown mandates.
“We calculate these changes using the same kind of aggregated and anonymized data used to show popular times for places in Google Maps,” the company said. In other words, it’s not tracking you specifically, but batching the data, according to Google.
Some of the interesting results from the collection of Alaskans’ locations shows that Juneau was overall the most compliant with the stay-home mandates, with a more than 50 percent drop in visits to retail and recreation.
As for working at the office, 31 percent of Juneau workers were not in their cubicles: Many State workers were staying home, in spite of the statements made in a lawsuit by ASFCME CEO Jake Metcalfe.
Ketchikan, an early hot spot of COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak, was also solidly adhering to the stay-home orders.
On the other end of the scale, Kenai residents were the least likely to stay home, followed by the Mat-Su.
View the entire report for all Alaska communities where the tracking is taking place at this link.
Anchorage:
- Retail and recreation: -20%
- Grocery and pharmacy: +9%
- Workplace: -29%
Fairbanks:
- Retail and recreation: -13%
- Grocery and pharmacy: +4
- Workplace: -17%
Juneau:
- Retail and recreation: -52%
- Grocery and pharmacy: -24%
- Workplace: -31%
Kenai:
- Retail and recreation: +6%
- Grocery and pharmacy: +27%
- Workplace: -16%
Ketchikan:
- Retail and recreation: -32%
- Grocery and pharmacy: -38%
- Workplace: -24%
Mat-Su:
- Retail and recreation: +2%
- Grocery and pharmacy: +17%
- Workplace: -19%
The tracking reports were developed to be helpful “while adhering to our stringent privacy protocols and protecting people’s privacy. No personally identifiable information, like an individual’s location, contacts or movement, is made available at any point,” Google said.
Nationwide, the average variance off of the baseline looks like:
- Retail and recreation: -34%
- Grocery and pharmacy: -4%
- Workplace: -29%
The reports are created with aggregated, anonymized sets of data from users who enabled the “Location History” setting on their smart phone, which is usually off by default. People who have “Location History” turned on can turn it off at any time from theirGoogle Account and can delete Location History data directly from their Timeline, the company said.
