Sturgis Motorcycle Rally May Have Caused 250,000 Coronavirus Cases, Economists Say
By: TommyBeer (Forbes)
Economists? Did they read a copy of 'Epidemiology for Dummies'?
According to the Bing COVID-19 tracker there have been 1,344,590 confirmed infections in the United States between Aug. 7, 2020, and Sep. 7. 2020. Are we supposed to believe that Sturgis is responsible for 19 pct of those infections? To quote President Joe, that's malarkey. Since Aug. 7 we've seen ongoing protests, college parties, and open beaches. Yet these economists (?) can pinpoint Sturgis as a super spreader event.
What's next? Will Dr. Anthony Fauci provide us with an economic summary for the third quarter? Who'd be dumb enough to accept an economic analysis from a medical expert?
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
A group of economists drawing on cell phone data to track movements and Covid-19 case data estimate that the Sturgis motorcycle rally in South Dakota in August could be responsible for 250,000 new Covid-19 cases, a startling figure that provides an early assessment of the effects of the large outdoor gathering, though the figure has not yet been corroborated by epidemiologists or officials.
KEY FACTS
The annual 10-day motorcycle rally held in Sturgis, South Dakota, which began on August 7 and ran until August 16, was attended by nearly 500,000 people.
The study's authors claim they used anonymized cell phone data to show that foot traffic at restaurants and bars, entertainment venues, hotels and campgrounds rose considerably in and around the Sturgis area.
The study also looked at the rate of new Covid-19 cases in the county that hosted the event, as well as counties that sent the most attendees to the event, showing an increase in both over the weeks following the event.
The IZA study explains that the rally included many of the "worst-case scenarios for super-spreading," due to its length (10 days) and other conditions, such limited social distancing and a relative lack of face coverings being worn.
According to Andrew Friedson, associate professor of Economics at the University of Colorado, over 250,000 Covid-19 cases reported nationwide between August 2 and September 2 are due to the rally, which would account for approximately 19% of cases in the U.S. during this timeframe.
The paper also attempted to determine the economic impact of the rally and claims that "if we conservatively assume that all of these cases were non-fatal, then these cases represent a cost of over $12.2 billion, based on the statistical cost of a Covid-19 case of $46,000 estimated by Kniesner and Sullivan (2020)"
"This is enough to have paid each of the estimated 462,182 rally attendees $26,553.64 not to attend," the study claims, although it adds that "this is by no means an accurate accounting of the true externality cost of the event, as it counts those who attended and were infected as part of the externality when their costs are likely internalized."
Crucial Quote:
"Now we're all here together tonight. And we're being human once again. F*ck that Covid sh*t." - Smash Mouth singer Steve Harwell, 2020 Sturgis Concert
Key Background:
Recent independent data, not affiliated with the IZA study, confirm that coronavirus cases are rising sharply in the Midwest and South. According to a Reuters report published over the weekend, South Dakota has experienced the biggest increase, on a percentage basis, in the country over the past two weeks at 126%, reporting over 3,700 new cases. Health officials have confirmed at least some of the rise in cases is due to the 10-day event held in South Dakota. Infections are also rising rapidly in Iowa, which has seen more than 13,500 new cases in the past two weeks, and North Dakota, with 3,600 new cases in the same period. NPR reported last week that at least 12 states have turned up cases linked to the rally. A Minnesota man in his 60s who went to the rally died last this week, said Kris Ehresmann, head of infectious disease for the Minnesota Department of Health.
Tangent:
Despite the controversy surrounding the Sturgis rally and the rising Covid cases in the area, officials did not cancel the 2020 South Dakota State Fair, which reported an attendance of 205,000 people last year. The fair ran from last Thursday through Labor Day. According to USA Today, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem has been a strong advocate of these large events, and has "discouraged schools from requiring masks, instead promoting hand-washing as the best way to prevent infections, and railed against an 'elite class of so-called experts' whose opinions impact individuals' liberties."
CHIEF CRITIC
Governor Kristi Noem issued a statement Tuesday afternoon to refute the validity of the study. "This report isn't science; it's fiction. Under the guise of academic research, this report is nothing short of an attack on those who exercised their personal freedom to attend Sturgis," said Governor Noem. "Predictably, some in the media breathlessly report on this non-peer reviewed model, built on incredibly faulty assumptions that do not reflect the actual facts and data. At one point, academic modeling also told us that South Dakota would have 10,000 COVID patients in the hospital at our peak. Today, we have less than 70. I look forward to good journalists, credible academics, and honest citizens repudiating this nonsense."
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Economists are doing what they do best: producing fake numbers from bad models to inflate forecasts. Even with the most generous interpretation of this 'research'; at best, this study is pseudoscience. But common sense should tell us that these economists are producing fake news.
More Propaganda ! I notice they didn't bother calculating the effect the BLM protests have had on the spread of COVID. I wonder why?
How many people evacuated to escape hurricane Laura? Where did they go?
How many people have evacuated to escape the wildfires in California? Where have those people gone?
Sturgis hasn't been the only large public event to happen over the past month. If real epidemiologists could trace Sturgis as a super spreader event then real epidemiologists would have reported real data.
Economists? What the hell do economists know? Would you trust Paul Krugman's medical advice?
I wondered how long it would take a trumpturd supporter to blame the protesters and not the Sturgis scum who are spreading Co-Vid.
Disney World reopened July 11, but nobody's complaining about that. I hardly think a Disney vacation is any more essential than a motorcycle rally. We're still a free country and people are allowed to make their own choices.
When it comes to spreading COVID I doubt either group is less guilty. I did notice that the so called "Sturgis scum" didn't riot, burn, or loot during their rally so they're obviously less scummy than those that did.
It's the outside agitators doing all the rioting and burning, right wing supremacist scum, who are inciting and agitating and then blaming it all on peaceful protesters.
blob:
Won't those outside agitators bring the virus to the protests? Won't those outside agitators take the virus with them when they leave?
Data has been reported by the medical community that shows COVID-19 fatalities disproportionately affects the Black population. The Black population is at higher risk for severe symptoms and fatal outcomes. Dr. Fauci has stated that any public gathering will spread the virus. The data and medical guidelines all indicate that the protests are not a good idea while trying to control spread of the virus.
So then you admit that the huge public gathering of Sturgis scum will/has spread the virus.
Finally!
What about public gatherings spreading the virus is difficult to understand? Sturgis had the same potential for spreading the virus as do protests.
Unfortunately the political motivation for what is being reported hasn't informed us about the potential for spreading the virus. If Sturgis was responsible for wide spread of the virus then it follows that the protests have also been responsible for wide spread of the virus. The coronavirus isn't politically woke or politically correct.
"The annual 10-day motorcycle rally held in Sturgis, South Dakota, which began on August 7 and ran until August 16, was attended by nearly 500,000 people."
The largest of the protests had at most 15,000 people wearing masks and spreading out. Even if you look at the total number of people who protested after George Floyd's murder which was about 500,000 people, that was worldwide in over 550 locations. Sturgis was the ENTIRE globe of protesters all in ONE location then spreading out to the States/cities of their origins. Claiming they both had the "same potential for spreading the virus" is just beyond ignorant.
It's nice to see that there is someone who is so positive and optimistic about how things are going in the USA. After all, the problems that are happening there will just disappear, it will be a miracle. (Where have I heard that before?)
What's happening in the United States is just a continuation. Everyone seems to forget that the BLM protests began while Barack Obama and Joe Biden were in the White House. Obama moved military assets to the Pacific and spearheaded the Trans Pacific Partnership to confront China. The United States did not recover from recession while Obama and Biden were in charge.
With the exception of the COVID pandemic that China unleashed on the world, most of the problems the United States is experiencing carried over from the Obama/Biden administration. And Obama inherited many of those problems from George W. Bush.
Many of these problems were created forty years ago when neo-liberals took over government. Over the last forty years the political leadership of the United States has pursued self-interest without regard for harm to the country. A government that dedicated itself to policies destined to fail should not expect any other result.
Isn't that because the Democratic states with the first spikes early in the pandemic didn't control spread of the virus?
Sturgis motorcycle rally was a 'superspreader event'
“The Sturgis Rally was one of the largest in-person gatherings since the outbreak of COVID-19 in the United States,” said Joseph J. Sabia, one of the study’s authors, a professor of economics and the director of the Center for Health Economics & Policy Studies at San Diego State University. He described the “public health costs” of the rally as “substantial and widespread.” He and his co-authors estimate that dealing with the fallout from the rally will involve more than $12 billion in health care costs.
“The spread of the virus due to the event was large,” the authors write, because it hosted people from all over the country. But the severity of the spread was closely tied to the approaches to the pandemic by Sturgis attendees’ home states. In some places, any spread related to people returning from the rally was blunted by strong mitigation measures, like a face-mask mandate or a prohibition against indoor dining.
The findings come in a new paper , “The Contagion Externality of a Superspreading Event: The Sturgis Motorcycle Rally and COVID-19,” published by IZA — Institute of Labor Economics, a German think tank. Its four authors are all researchers affiliated with American universities.
It is not clear if the study was subject to peer review.
The rally was held in a state whose governor, Kristi Noem, is a close Trump supporter and, like the president, a skeptic of many coronavirus mitigation measures, such as the wearing of face masks. And while the rally itself had no political orientation, Trump has made overtures to bikers, even inviting some to ride at the White House. At the Sturgis rally, a group called Bikers for Trump registered voters.
The new research paper contains an unlikely but telling quotation from Steve Harwell, singer for the band Smash Mouth, which performed at this year’s rally: “Now we’re all here together tonight. And we’re being human once again. F*** that COVID s***.” Trump used a Smash Mouth song during the 2016 campaign; the band played at the Lincoln Memorial ahead of his 2017 presidential inauguration.
Many of the researchers behind the Sturgis study previously examined the protests against police brutality that swept across the nation earlier this summer. Many Trump supporters wondered why neither the media nor public health professionals condemned those protests, when they seemed to plainly contravene social distancing guidelines. But most people at those protests wore masks, and there was virtually no indoor socializing of the kind that aerosol scientists say poses the highest risk of viral transmission. That combination prevented those protests from becoming superspreader events.
I'd be curious to know the figures for the virus deaths of the parents and grandparents of the Sturgis attendees, although it's not likely that they will be calculated. Too bad that the Sturgis attendees who cause those deaths are not charged with homicide.