Conservatism and infrequent mask usage: A study of US counties during the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

Objective: Although the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention eventually recommended wearing masks in public to slow the spread of the coronavirus, the practice has been unevenly distributed in the United States.

Methods: In this article, we model county-level infrequent mask usage as a function of three pillars of conservatism: (1) Republican political leadership (percentage of votes for Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election), (2) conservative Protestantism (percentage evangelical Christian), and (3) right-wing media consumption (Google searches for ).

Results: Our analyses indicate that mask usage tends to be in counties with greater support for President Trump (in majority Trump counties), counties with more evangelical Christians, and areas with greater interest in .

Love thy Aged? A State-Level Analysis of Religiosity and Mobility in Aging Populations During the Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) Pandemic.

We test whether the association between state religiosity and distance traveled is moderated by population age during the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Mobility is operationalized as the state-level average median distance traveled from February 24 to May 4 across the contiguous United States. Shelter-in-place rates are operationalized as the state-level percentage of users staying home.

The Blood of Christ Compels Them: State Religiosity and State Population Mobility During the Coronavirus (COVID-19) Pandemic.

This paper examines the association between state religiosity and population mobility during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. We use first-party geo-behavioral data collected through mobile phone operating systems, global positioning systems, and Wi-Fi signals to assess changes in the average median distance traveled by approximately 15,000,000 devices over eight weeks (February 24-April 13) in the contiguous United States. Robust regression results show that more religious states tend to exhibit higher average mobility scores and slower average declines in mobility.