A study published by the German based IZA Institute of Labor Economics claims that last month's annual Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in South Dakota resulted in more than 260,000 COVID-19 cases in the space of a month accounting for nearly 20% of cases in the United States during this period. The report concludes:
In this paper we document the spread of infectious disease due to a mass gathering conducted during a pandemic against the guidance of CDC. The spread of the virus due to the event was large: we document large increases in cumulative cases relative to the synthetic counterfactual in the county of the event, and the cluster of CBGs in the county and adjoining the county over the entire post-event time period, with larger increases detected towards the end of the time period. Similarly, we find large increases statewide – with increases in the South Dakota cumulative COVID-19 caseload relative to the synthetic counterfactual that were between 3.6 and 3.9 cases per 1,000 population.
We are further able to document national spread due to the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, although that spread also appears to have been successfully mitigated by states with strict infection mitigation policies. In counties with the largest relative inflow to the event, the per 1,000 case rate increased by 10.7 percent after 24 days following the onset of Sturgis Pre-Rally Events. Multiplying the percent case increases for the high, moderate-high and moderate inflow counties by each county’s respective pre-rally cumulative COVID-19 cases and aggregating, yields a total of 263,708 additional cases in these locations due to the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally. Adding the number of new cases due to the Rally in South Dakota estimated by synthetic control (3.6 per 1,000 population, scaled by the South Dakota population of approximately 858,000) brings the total number of cases to 266,796 or 19 percent of 1.4 million new cases of COVID-19 in the United States between August 2nd 2020 and September 2nd 2020.
To put this number into perspective, the Sturgis rally has caused more than twice as many COVID-19 cases than have been tabulated in all of Canada since the beginning of the pandemic (132,142 as of this writing).
The IZA study raised the ire of South Dakota's Republican Governor Kristi Noem who tweeted:
This report isn't science. It's fiction. Under the guise of academic research, it's nothing short of an attack on those who exercised their personal freedom to attend Sturgis.
I'm old enough to remember when conservatives used to champion personal responsibility, prudence and protecting one's family. Those days are evidently gone.
And it's not like public health experts didn't warn that Sturgis would become a superspreader event. But many attendees just didn't care. A typical attitude was, "If I die from the virus, it was just meant to be." Such an attitude heeds no regard to the possibility of spreading the virus to other people (including to family) and killing them in the process.
According to Johns Hopkins University, there are as of this writing 6,321,054 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the United States with 189,487 deaths. This gives us a mortality rate of 3%. On the basis of this mortality rate and the estimate of 266,796 cases cited in the study, the Sturgis rally could result in the deaths of 8,000 people - many of whom I suspect did not attend the rally much less set foot in South Dakota. To date, COVID-19 has claimed 9,146 Canadians.
Governor Noem can tut-tut about the study all she wants. The fact is that Noem saw fit to contribute to the spread of a pandemic by permitting Sturgis to proceed. This will cause people to get sick and die in South Dakota and beyond and she could utterly care less. No wonder President Trump likes her so much.
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