Canyon County Gets an F In Social Distancing

The national media hasn't been shy when it comes to shaming Idaho for how we're handling the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on this scorecard, they're sort of right.

Unacast, a location data company, is giving counties all over the country a letter grade based on how well they're following the basic principals of social distancing. They're basing those letter grades off of cellphone GPS data tracking the distance we traveled prior to the coronavirus pandemic hitting the United States to how far we're traveling now.

Since the website went public, the traffic to it has been incredibly high so getting the data to load is difficult. When we did get Idaho's county map to load, we were able to see that Unacast had given Canyon County an "F" when it came to social distancing meaning folks in the 2C reduced their daily travel by only 9%. We're not overly surprised by the failing grade since neither Nampa or Caldwell issued the shut down of dine-in restaurants prior to Governor Little's statewide "Stay Home" order.

Ada County received a slightly better C grade, reducing travel by 24%. Boise Mayor Lauren McClean's order to shut down dine-in restaurants and bars effective March 20 was no doubt a driving force behind the drop in travel. Eagle Mayor Jason Pierce followed suit a day before the state wide order.

Blaine County, which has the most confirmed positive cases, received an A after seeing a 63% drop in travel. They were put under a state ordered "shelter-in-place" on March 19.

Overall, Idaho received a "D" with a 16% drop in travel. We're also ranked in the bottom five states in the country.

It's worth noting that the data for Idaho on this map hasn't been updated since Sunday, March 22. Something tells us that our "grades" will improve under the "Stay Home" order.

I know that many of us are on edge right now. Heck, we've been on an emotional roller coaster that's bounced around from angry to sad to hopeless to confused over the past week and a half...but if we want to return to our normal way of life sooner rather than later, it's so important for us to all buy in and stay home!