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Covid-19 Community Mobility Reports
- lawrenceyan 7y agoRetail & Recreation down 47% and Grocery & Pharmacy down 22% in the United States. Wow, I didn't think it would be such a significant drop.
- soneil 7y agoI'm in Ireland .. Retail & Recreation are down 80-90% in most counties! What I did find interesting though, is that after the initial lockdown, we show a reliable increase in "parks", that all take a sharp nosedive after it was tightened and we were told recreation should be within 2km of home. That felt like something of a facebook-furor at the time, but it seems google's data really does back it up.
- rbinv 7y agoWith all this data, I've always wondered why there isn't some sort of internal "hedge fund" at Google.
- StandardFuture 7y agoI asked that same question once before here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22041205 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22041205 but it only got a few responses.
- crispyporkbites 7y agoToo much noise. The costs to sift through and find an identifiable market trend that has an actual upside would be very high, and you still don't have a complete picture of the market so you'd be wrong in a lot of scenarios.
- est31 7y agoYeah there are stories of hedge funds buying and then selling cars all over the country to find out the serial numbers so that they can estimate their sale count before the quarterly reports in a german tanks kind of fashion. Having good information is very valuable for hedge funds. However, I don't think that hedge funds are "Googly" products. They fail at the toothbrush test. They require massive capital investments, and while Google has lots of money, is it enough to drive enough revenue growth? Furthermore, there is the legal danger. With businesses using Google products, Google is likely in possession of insider information on most publicly traded information. E.g. when there is an internal meeting at a company and suddenly everyone is visiting job websites that use Google CDN hosted fonts, or maybe everyone is visiting websites looking for cars to buy or houses. Or think about internal company documents hosted on Google docs or that meeting being conducted over hangouts. How can Google ensure that their products don't accidentially use that insider info? How can they separate the toxic insider info from the okay to use non-insider info? Does that separation already constitute insider information? Lastly, Google possesses probably more information than most entities in history, and even today I'd put it into the top 10. They also have gigantic capabilities to organize that data, it's in fact the very core purpose of the company. If you possess perfect knowledge how a market will evolve, will someone want to trade stock with you? If you knew how a coin toss would turn out, would people want to make bets with you about the coin toss? Google getting into the hedge fund business might in fact not work because their buy or sell orders alone could change the stock value to a degree where Google doesn't make any money from it. I'm not an expert though, maybe there are mechanisms to counter this effect. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
- tpmx 7y agohttps://dealbook.nytimes.com/2010/03/22/google-is-now-searching-for-bond-traders/ https://dealbook.nytimes.com/2010/03/22/google-is-now-search... > Sergey Brin, Google’s co-founder, once said the company should start a hedge fund because it had so much information. But Eric Schmidt, Google’s chief executive, reportedly responded, “Sergey, among your many ideas, this is the worst,” since the company would face serious legal problems in starting a hedge fund. > Regardless of Google’s plans, the company is looking for a trader of foreign government bonds, an analyst for Google’s United States government bond portfolio and a portfolio analyst for agency mortgage-backed securities, according to Business Insider.
- twic 7y agoA theory i have heard from someone in the hedge fund industry is that this use of "alternative data" is mostly marketing. Investors go to hedge funds for their genius high-alpha proprietary strategies. If you can honestly say that you are feeding tracking of honeybee movements into your model, that makes you seem like far-out geniuses with loads of alpha, so you will attract more investors. For a hedge fund, attracting investors is more important than actually doing good trades. Of course, nobody will say this out loud. This is not to say there are not some genuine users of alt data. Of course there are! But it's not happening at the scale that everyone wants to believe. This is a very similar story to the whole "big data" thing in Main Street businesses.
- rohan1024 7y agoIndia's mobility report[1] shows a spike in outside activities just before lockdown. I hope I am wrong but I think we are going to see spike in coronavirus cases just before end of lockdown. Not sure what government will do then. [1]: https://www.gstatic.com/covid19/mobility/2020-03-29_IN_Mobility_Report_en.pdf https://www.gstatic.com/covid19/mobility/2020-03-29_IN_Mobil...
- legolas2412 7y agoI think that spike is just the two normal days between 22nd's curfew and 25's lockdown
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- rohan1024 7y agoDefinitely not normal because you can see the spike in grocery stores. People were stocking up.
- legolas2412 7y agoUmm, but the activity is still lower than the baseline of normal day. There is no reason to expect a sudden increase in cases because of those two days in particular
- chrismorgan 7y agoI see no evidence at all of such a spike as you describe. In the last couple of weeks, you had janata curfew on the 22nd, and things plunged; at about that time, a fair fraction of the country went into lockdown, so on the 23rd and 24th numbers came back up, but not to baseline; then from the 25th, national lockdown, and everything’s back down to levels similar to the curfew day (some figures a bit higher, some a bit lower).
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- rbinv 7y agoWhy is China missing?
- izacus 7y agoPerhaps because Google services are blocked in China and Android phones there don't have Play Services with Location History? You can't plot data you don't have ;)
- rbinv 7y agoWasn't aware of that, but it sure makes sense, thanks.
- baybal2 7y agoThere are millions of people in China with always on VPNs, and they still have a non-insubstantial business in the country. The thing is, the geographic data there is protected by law, and they don't want an espionage charge. The same is provably true for a suspicious missing of a few other countries with similar attitudes.
- 9nGQluzmnq3M 7y agoIf you're using a VPN, your location won't show up as mainland China.
- 7y ago
- heurifk 7y agoI'm ok with Google having this data. I'm not ok with governments having it.
- squiggleblaz 7y agoWhy? Google has enough power to fuck with your life and no oversight whatsoever.
- mcny 7y agoGoogle doesn’t have armies or overzealous attorney generals (and lackeys) willing to ruin lives for their stupid conviction rate. I wouldn’t have believed police officers lie on a ticket if it hadn’t happened to me.
- tcd 7y agoNo, instead they have armies of overzealous AI bots making decisions without any human oversight. That's far more scary to me, but you know, you do you.
- sixstringtheory 7y agoWhy? At least with government you have theoretical recourse at the polls. With a megacorp you can’t do shit if you don’t like what they’re up to.
- sschueller 7y ago
- moonchild 7y agoIs this data available in structured format anywhere, or do you have to scrape the pdfs?
- currycurry16 7y agoLet's collect the data in a machine readable form together! https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1HYTBDsbGeTHY664DNDJ-bPiJpdCwAhJGRbomXpvyzLA/edit?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1HYTBDsbGeTHY664DNDJ-... EDIT: Can someone make a map out of the data? (It might not be comparable, but still)
- pi-squared 7y agoI started a repo [1] that parses data for at least some of the national data tried. PRs welcome [1] https://gitlab.com/pisquared/scrape_google_mobility https://gitlab.com/pisquared/scrape_google_mobility
- gamwe6 7y agoIn CSV format over there -> https://github.com/gamwe6/covid-19-community-mobility-reports/blob/master/2020-03-29-reports.csv https://github.com/gamwe6/covid-19-community-mobility-report...
- spuz 7y agoIt would be interesting to be able to compare countries. For example, which countries have responded most to a lockdown and which have not responded at all? The data is already broken down by state so it would be good to see this data on a map of the US.
- avian 7y agoThey specifically say in the report that data differs even between individual regions in a country and are not comparable. It's really more of a qualitative "we have these numbers and they went up/down like this" kind of a report. They don't say what the numbers mean (except some vague sense of being related to "visits and length of stay"). I find it really hard to draw any kind of conclusion from this.
- newsbinator 7y agoHere's the one for the country where I live, Belarus: https://www.gstatic.com/covid19/mobility/2020-03-29_BY_Mobility_Report_en.pdf https://www.gstatic.com/covid19/mobility/2020-03-29_BY_Mobil... Notice anything unexpected?
- sheldoneth 7y agoI'm curious, does that look accurate to you? Do you know why it jumped by 41% for parks?
- planb 7y agoWeather. In the German data, you can see the days with lots of sunshine.
- usr1106 7y agoAt least here in Finland you couldn't miss that when going outside. One factor is sunshine. Another probably kids getting unbearable after not having to go to school for many days. Probably also applies to parents working from home. Lot of families taking a walk. They closed natural parks after they got overcrowded.
- nicoburns 7y agoOne factor is that for many countries, that's the only activity that people are now allowed to do outside of the house.
- fxj 7y agoWhy PDF? There is nothing in the reports that could not be done with html.
- adrian_mrd 7y agoFrom The Verge’s report [1] “Google said that it chose PDFs over web pages because they could be more easily downloaded and shared with workers in the field.” [1] https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/3/21206318/google-location-data-mobility-reports-covid-19-privacy https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/3/21206318/google-location-d...
- silon42 7y agoWe really need EPUB support in browsers/OSs (in a safe way aka no JS extensions).
- nroets 7y agoSome of the models assume the effect of a lockdown was immediate.[1] The reality is that retail declined before the lockdown. So this data will help tremendously. It even shows the panic buying buying before the lockdown in South Africa. [1]: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/sph/ide/gida-fellowships/Imperial-College-COVID19-Europe-estimates-and-NPI-impact-30-03-2020.pdf https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/s...
- usr1106 7y agoWhy would anybody turn on location history? (Serious question, I don't even have Google Play Services in my phone). 95 % users are known not to touch any settings. I guess Google has a trick to make more of them do it. Which one?
- MikusR 7y agoWhy wouldn't I? I can see where and when I was, how long I was there. It can give context to notes and photos. It's essentially an extension of memory.
- novaRom 7y agoIf it's an extension of your memory, then why deliberately share it with others, with police, with FBI? There were many stories on HN how random people got into troubles because of this "feature".
- Broken_Hippo 7y agoAnd this is something that should be a call for change in government, a call for change in leadership, and a change in how the laws are structured. Perhaps better police/FBI training. And so on. I'll also mention that these things are memorable because they are outliers in general, and sometimes spectacular. This is why we remember plane crashes and ignore the numerous shower accidents that kill folks.
- MikusR 7y agoThere are even more stories of people getting into troubles just by walking, sitting, sleeping.
- shadowgovt 7y agoBecause it also distributes to all the devices I own so when I want to use my own data, I don't have to remember whether it's in the phone's store, the laptop's store, the tablet's store, and so on.
- soneil 7y ago
- csomar 7y agoHere is Sweden: https://www.gstatic.com/covid19/mobility/2020-03-29_SE_Mobility_Report_en.pdf https://www.gstatic.com/covid19/mobility/2020-03-29_SE_Mobil... Clearly people are afraid but it's nowhere close to countries which enforced a lock-down.
- grey-area 7y agoDeaths have doubled in 3 days so Sweden is growing exponentially too, it just started a little later than other countries so it's in the part of the curve that feels pretty innocuous. It's quite remarkable how similar the trajectories are starting from around the 1st death (though of course later trajectories might differ markedly depending on the measures taken now). The FT has some good charts of this: https://www.ft.com/coronavirus-latest https://www.ft.com/coronavirus-latest
- jaclaz 7y agoIMHO these are better (counting in cases/deaths per million inhabitants is much more comparable than absolute counts): http://nrg.cs.ucl.ac.uk/mjh/covid19/ http://nrg.cs.ucl.ac.uk/mjh/covid19/ Namely (Sweden): http://nrg.cs.ucl.ac.uk/mjh/covid19/#covid-eu-norm2 http://nrg.cs.ucl.ac.uk/mjh/covid19/#covid-eu-norm2 http://nrg.cs.ucl.ac.uk/mjh/covid19/#rates-nordic http://nrg.cs.ucl.ac.uk/mjh/covid19/#rates-nordic
- grey-area 7y agoThose show cases not deaths, I'm not sure that's very reliable as a measure - the testing varies dramatically, it will be tempting for governments to undertest and it's hard to get hold of tests now. Just to pick one example the US has shot up to top place by cases in the last few days mainly because they started seriously testing. Personally I prefer graphs of deaths (normalised for population would be fine I guess), starting from 1st death or similar rather than arbitrary offsets in date as the spread only begins from the first cases (usually undetected).
- bradfa 7y agoI think that Google and Apple will be extremely helpful in the coming months, at least in the USA, for tracing the spread of COVID-19. Google and Apple know where probably 90+% of adults/teens in the USA are located in real time. If they are able to anonymously tell you that you were in the same building as someone who has tested positive for the virus then you could take extra precautions or further isolate yourself to help prevent the spread. This wouldn't be perfect but it would be much more data than is given to people today about who is infected and it would make tracing contacts much easier for health officials. A small number of people who read sites like Hacker News will find this an appalling invasion of privacy. Health officials will think it's a really useful thing to try. It'll be interesting to watch, if it does happen. In the near term, I would happily try to convince everyone I meet to opt-in to such a service as I feel the health benefits could greatly outweigh the privacy concerns. But then when we do have a better long term solution for this virus I would also strongly recommend people to disable the tracking.
- cm2187 7y agoHaving your medical records broadcasted to anyone nearby you, how could it go wrong?
- lihaciudaniel 7y agoExactly this is creepy dystopian. And also think how much it tracks everything you do including opening apps and everything you search
- drivingmenuts 7y agoI would prefer that they track only with permission of the tracked, but I realize that we are little better than tagged animals to them.
- wbronitsky 7y agoWith Apple and Google they already have the permission of the tracked. It’s in the terms of service for your phone, or your phone’s OS, or any of the other vectors they control that you carry around with you all the time.
- NZ_Matt 7y agoFascinating data, the US generally showing a less than 50% change while other countries with national lock downs are >90%. It'd be very interesting to see this data overlayed against cases of covid, you maysee them both follow a similar downward trend with a week or two delay. Possibly also determine what change in mobility is required to prevent exponential growth
- ekianjo 7y agoJapan is like "What pandemic?". So unbelievable.
- munchman 7y agopotentially stupid question - why do the residential increases seem relatively low compared to the decreases in other locations?
- Delfino 7y agoJust a guess: people already spent more time at home than in other areas so if the absolute amount of time increased at home the same as it decreased elsewhere, the percentage increase is smaller for homes than percentage decrease elsewhere?
- tonyzale 7y agoPerhaps the data is tracking people's movements, and people aren't moving much in their homes (or have their phones set down somewhere).
- pi-squared 7y agoI started a repo [1] that parses the data. PRs welcome. [1] https://gitlab.com/pisquared/scrape_google_mobility https://gitlab.com/pisquared/scrape_google_mobility
- mariojv 7y agoThe data around parks & recreation seems really odd to me, does anyone else agree? Anecdotally, the public parks where I live (Bexar County, Texas) have gotten so busy that I rarely go on weekends anymore because social distancing has been made so difficult. Even after 5pm on weekdays, I've seen a spike in traffic similar to what a really busy weekend would look like. This has been the case at every park I've been to. Since basically any other form of recreation outside the home is no longer available, it makes sense that they're busier. Perhaps they're including places like theme parks in that category? Bexar County, to my knowledge, doesn't have enough closed state parks to account for the drop in traffic. Obviously, I'm missing something. Maybe people just aren't searching for parks further from them and don't need directions to their closest park.
- mesum 7y agoHyperurl.co/pakcovid Goto last Tab
- ninju 7y agoI wonder if the graphs are affected by a "starting" bias, meaning is the mobility on the first date, February 17th for the charts I was looking at, used as the measure for seeing the trend on subsequent dates. The issue what if that date was particularly cold or rainy and then as we moved into March the weather got better of course you would see greater mobility movement as compared to a cold February day esp. the category of Parks and recreation But instead had they used is sliding window for the baseline (i.e. using the average of the mobility for the past 3 years) for any given day then seeing what this year's date is as compared to that we would see (hopefully) a dramatic decline. Just thinking out loud Take care and STAY DISTANT