Michigan Staying Home During Stay-At-Home Order
Michiganders we are following the rules and staying at home during this time, which is more than the rest of the country is doing to flatten the curve. According to a recent NY Times article, Michigan is listening to the social distancing guidelines and stay-at-home orders which is unlike most states (except for the Northeast) which are still traveling either an average amount or more than usual.
New York Times have collected their data from Cuebiq, a data intelligence firm, which measures the range that people travel each day. It doesn't track how many interactions a person has had while they are traveling and just because someone travels a few miles doesn't mean the traveling is wrong as people still go to the grocery store. The data is kind of important now because some states don't have a stay-at-home order and traveling even a few miles from your house can still put you at risk or others you are around at risk.
According to the data by county, only one county in the mitten did more than average traveling, while the rest of the mitten stayed home or did little to no traveling. In addition, Michigan was one of the earliest states to put in the stay-at-home order and it shows because our average travel distance is under 2 miles and has been since March 24th. The stay at home order is effective to keeping people from contracting the virus and Michigan putting the order in 2 weeks ago has certainly helped, as numbers of infected people is expected to rise this week due to stay-at-home orders not going into effect in the South until this weekend.
You can see all of the data here. Some of the scary data skews towards the Southeast since most of the southern states haven't put in a measure to keep people home or have just done it this past weekend.