For all of our grousing about COVID fatigue, a few novel trends are clear one year into the pandemic.
In the early weeks of 2021, Californians are staying home way more than we did in our pre-pandemic life. Even so, we're heading out to shop, dine and work far more now than in March 2020, when state officials issued the first sweeping stay-at-home order, or the dark period that followed the winter holidays, when we hunkered down as COVID-19 caseloads exploded. And to the extent we are venturing out, we are using cars rather than resuming pre-COVID commute patterns on buses and trains, a trend with troubling implications for transit services and the environment should it become long-standing.
The findings come from a Google compilation of vast troves of cellphone location tracking data, part of an ongoing effort the tech giant says it initiated to help leaders around the globe gauge the impact of COVID-related closures and travel restrictions.