Current Events : Crowd of 250,000 expected at Sturgis biker rally, no masks required: UPDATE

Crowd of 250,000 expected at Sturgis biker rally, no masks required: UPDATE

Scroll down to see my new post with the update. At least 100 cases so far are linked to the biker rally.


https://abcnews.go.com/US/sturgis-motorcycle-rally-draw-250000-people-south-dakota/story?id=72198988

Despite concerns about large gatherings during the COVID-19 pandemic, as many as 250,000 motorcycle enthusiasts from around the country are expected to roll into western South Dakota for the 80th annual Sturgis Motorcycle Rally beginning Friday and lasting 10 days.

Such a crowd would make it the largest event in the country to take place during the pandemic.

In a survey by the city in May, 60% of Sturgis residents said they preferred to cancel the event. But local business owners who rely on this once-a-year gathering for a huge percentage of their revenues, combined with a realization by city managers that the bikers were going to come to the area no matter what, prompted the city council to sanction the rally.

"The city fathers here wouldn't cancel this rally if it were the middle of World War 7," said Brent Bertelson, who has a home in Sturgis and will be attending his 26th rally this year. He said that "the money the city takes in is a number that Ripley wouldn't believe."

He's not wrong. Sales tax revenue from the rally brought Sturgis, a town of 7,000 people, $26 million last year, according to City Manager Daniel Ainslie.

Re: Crowd of 250,000 expected at Sturgis biker rally, no masks required

Que Sera Sera, I suppose. Am I paranoid to be anxious about this virus?

Re: Crowd of 250,000 expected at Sturgis biker rally, no masks required

No, you are not. This will not turn out well, bro.

But nevertheless, two friends and I are on our way there now.





PS I'm the one in the football helmet.

😺 Schrodinger's Cat walks into a bar, and doesn't. 🤨 Let's go, Brandon! 🤨 Try that in a small town.

😷 Crowd of 250,000 expected at Sturgis biker rally, no masks required

Avatar Lives Matter …          

Am I paranoid to be anxious about this virus?
Am I complacent not to be anxious? I believe the Sturgis bikers will do just fine.


[center] [hr] [poll multiple] [s] [sic] [sub]2[/sub] [sup]th[/sup] [u]  

😷 Crowd of 250,000 expected at Sturgis biker rally, no masks required

Niiiiice!

Re: Crowd of 250,000 expected at Sturgis biker rally, no masks required

Yet another reason why we won't ever stamp out this disease. People don't give a fuck. - Until it happens to them.

Re: Crowd of 250,000 expected at Sturgis biker rally, no masks required

I’d be more worried about the amount of crabs and STD’s going around there.

Gone

Re: Crowd of 250,000 expected at Sturgis biker rally, no masks required

If they were all supporting BLM this wouldn't be a story that would be published.

Ding Dong! 🤡🌎

Re: Crowd of 250,000 expected at Sturgis biker rally, no masks required

Nailed it!



😺 Schrodinger's Cat walks into a bar, and doesn't. 🤨 Let's go, Brandon! 🤨 Try that in a small town.

Re: Crowd of 250,000 expected at Sturgis biker rally, no masks required

They will spread the coronavirus. I hope and wish a vaccine is developed as quickly as possible. I've heard maybe one will be available mass marketed by early next year.

https://youtu.be/iPUwtyZglQI

https://youtu.be/QRTNm6GLJYI

Re: Crowd of 250,000 expected at Sturgis biker rally, no masks required

What if they wear their helmets?

Re: Crowd of 250,000 expected at Sturgis biker rally, no masks required

PeeWee at Sturgis!





Bing.. Wobbledy wobble, wo-wo-wobble, wobbin'
https://vocaroo.com/1hz4nrSop8zd

Re: Crowd of 250,000 expected at Sturgis biker rally, no masks required



😺 Schrodinger's Cat walks into a bar, and doesn't. 🤨 Let's go, Brandon! 🤨 Try that in a small town.

Re: Crowd of 250,000 expected at Sturgis biker rally, no masks required

Here is an update on this story.

https://abcnews.go.com/US/multiple-states-report-covid-19-cases-linked-sturgis/story?id=72621900

Multiple states report COVID-19 cases linked to Sturgis rally

South Dakota's case counts and positivity rate are also rising.

Health experts' fears about the hundreds of thousands of bikers who descended on South Dakota for the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in the middle of a pandemic are coming true.

At least 100 coronavirus cases in eight states are believed to be linked to the 10-day motorcycle event earlier this month, according to The Associated Press. South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Nebraska, Montana, North Dakota, Wyoming and Washington state health departments all have reported cases.

Republican Gov. Kristi Noem, who's slated to speak at the Republican National convention Wednesday, supported holding the rally in her state.

"We are not – and WILL not – be the subjects of an elite class of so-called experts," she tweeted on Tuesday. "We the People are the government."

A patron who visited multiple bars in Sturgis, as well as a tattoo shop employee, tested positive for COVID-19, according to the South Dakota Health Department.

"Currently 40 cases have been reported to the South Dakota Department of Health related to the Sturgis Rally," the health department told ABC News in a statement. "This includes three out-of-state cases that we were notified of because those cases had close contact with a South Dakota resident."

On Aug. 7, the opening day of the rally, South Dakota had roughly 9,000 COVID-19 cases, according to the health department. By Aug. 26, positive cases had risen to 11,500. The state's positivity rate also rose, from 6% for the 14 days before Aug. 7, to 9% for the 14 days before Aug. 26.

A high positivity rate can be a sign that a state is only testing its sickest patients and failing to cast a net wide enough to accurately capture community transmission, according to Johns Hopkins University. The World Health Organization recommends that governments get their positivity testing threshold below 5%.

Re: Crowd of 250,000 expected at Sturgis biker rally, no masks required

Churchgoers who believe god will keep them safe, are some of the worst at spreading the virus. Their public profile is nothing like the bikers, but they do as much damage.

Re: Crowd of 250,000 expected at Sturgis biker rally, no masks required: UPDATE

Another update:

https://www.kxnet.com/news/sturgis-motorcycle-rally-leading-to-research-in-reverse-contact-tracing/

The Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in South Dakota drew nearly 500,000 people to the state in August. Some now suggest that the ripple effect from the gathering could be causing COVID-19 to surge throughout the Midwest.

North Dakota’s Chief Health Strategist Dr. Joshua Wynne says the rally was likely a contributing factor to the spread, but not the whole picture. Now, new research from the IZA Institute of Labor Economics shows how that rally was used in reverse contact tracing.

Using cell phone data and CDC records, researchers were able to trace the source of transmission for many back to Sturgis. Dr. Wynne says that kind of tracing could be a valuable resource in stopping the spread.

“The use of any tracking information that is not intrusive — I don’t want big brother looking in on me either — but if we can better understand how these events occur without violating personal liberty and personal freedom, I think that’s a good thing,” he said.

The Sturgis Rally lasted 10 days this summer, with minimal mask-wearing observed.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/10/17/sturgis-rally-spread/

Within weeks of the gathering, the Dakotas, along with Wyoming, Minnesota and Montana, were leading the nation in new coronavirus infections per capita. The surge was especially pronounced in North and South Dakota, where cases and hospitalization rates continued their juggernaut rise into October. Experts say they will never be able to determine how many of those cases originated at the 10-day rally, given the failure of state and local health officials to identify and monitor attendees returning home, or to trace chains of transmission after people got sick. Some, however, believe the nearly 500,000-person gathering played a role in the outbreak now consuming the Upper Midwest.

More than 330 coronavirus cases and one death were directly linked to the rally as of mid-September, according to a Washington Post survey of health departments in 23 states that provided information. But experts say that tally represents just the tip of the iceberg, since contact tracing often doesn’t capture the source of an infection, and asymptomatic spread goes unnoticed.
Despite the concerns expressed by health experts ahead of the event, efforts to urge returnees to self-quarantine lacked enforcement clout and were largely unsuccessful, and the work by state and local officials to identify chains of transmission and stop them was inconsistent and uncoordinated.

Those efforts became further complicated when some suspected of having the virus refused to be tested, said Kris Ehresmann, director of infectious-disease epidemiology at the Minnesota Department of Health.

Such challenges made it all but impossible to trace the infections attendees may have spread to others after they got home. Several infections tied to a wedding in Minnesota, for instance, “linked back to someone who had gone to Sturgis,” Ehresmann said. Those were not tallied with the Sturgis outbreak because “the web just gets too complicated,” she said.

Re: Crowd of 250,000 expected at Sturgis biker rally, no masks required: UPDATE

It had been a long ride back from Sturgis, S.D., so when he first felt an ache at the back of his throat, Kenny Cervantes figured he was just tired. He’d traveled the 400-some miles on his Harley, rumbling through wide-open farm and prairie land on his way home to Riverdale, Neb., where his girlfriend was waiting.

A lifelong motorcycle enthusiast, the 50-year-old construction worker and father of five had been determined to go to the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, a holy grail for bikers. Even when his girlfriend, Angie Balcom, decided to stay back because she was worried about being around so many people during a pandemic, Cervantes was adamant about going.

“I don’t think there was nothing that was going to stop me,” he said.

Back home, Cervantes took Tylenol for his throat and went to bed early. But he woke up the next morning coughing so hard he struggled to catch his breath. Over the next few days, the pain in his chest made him fear that his heart might stop, and a test later confirmed he had the novel coronavirus, which causes the disease covid-19. He was admitted to the hospital 11 days later, on Aug. 27. Soon, his girlfriend and his sister were sick, and Cervantes was going over everything he did and every place he visited in Sturgis, wondering where the virus had found him.

Cervantes feels certain he got the virus from his Sturgis trip, and shared that with the contact tracer from the Two Rivers Public Health Department who phoned him after his case was recorded. Nebraska borders South Dakota, and health officials there expected they might see rally-related infections.

Yet his illness was not classified as a Sturgis case, suggesting that even under the best of circumstances, infections might go uncounted. With so much still unknown, it worries him to think people might look at the rally and conclude that massive events aren’t concerning after all — that the risk is worth it.

That was how he saw it before he got sick. He recalls having a fleeting thought as he guided his motorcycle through the turns of the famed Needles Highway two months ago, taking in the sweeping views and rock formations close enough to touch: “If I catch the virus and die, I will be a happy man. I have lived.”

He hadn’t imagined that within a matter of days, he would feel that death was hovering right at his door.
The day Cervantes sat up from the couch and asked Balcom to take him to the emergency room, doctors put him on oxygen. He had been worried about the tightness in his chest, but he hadn’t grasped how bad it was. Only when he was being hooked up to the oxygen machine did he realize he hadn’t said goodbye to his children.

“I was just laying there thinking, ‘This could be it. This could be it,’” Cervantes said. “And, am I going to get another chance?”

He spent eight days in the hospital before being discharged Sept. 4. He was still sick when he left, but the doctors said he could recuperate at home. Walking across the hospital parking lot, though, he was so winded he had to take a moment to sit down.

Balcom, whose case was mild, cried in the car, relieved he was coming home. She never said “I told you so,” or got angry with him. She was upset, though, when she found out Cervantes’s case wasn’t included in covid-19 tallies linked to Sturgis.

“If we had an accurate representation of what’s going on, then people might say, ‘Maybe it’s not a good idea to go to the concert or go to the gathering,'" she said. “Everyone is just muddling through this because no one knows what the hell is going on.”

Cervantes now looks at things differently. Watching football, he worried how many of the thousands of fans admitted to a recent Kansas City Chiefs game might become infected, even as he noticed they sat apart. He once put on a mask to humor Balcom; now he says he has to resist the urge to yell at strangers to wear them.

After weeks of missed work, his stint in the hospital and a return visit to the ER over a blood clot concern, he’s come to deeply regret his decision.

“I was naive,” he said. “I was dumb, you know? I shouldn’t have went. I did; I can’t change that, so I just got to move forward. But sitting here just the past few days, that’s all I keep thinking about. I’m like, Jesus, look at the hell I’m going through, the hell I put everybody through. It ain’t worth it. It wasn’t. It really wasn’t.”

Re: Crowd of 250,000 expected at Sturgis biker rally, no masks required: UPDATE

too bad the dumbass didn't die

Re: Crowd of 250,000 expected at Sturgis biker rally, no masks required: UPDATE

He learned a valuable lesson that he's now telling other people who probably won't listen.
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