The Sturgis super-spreader event motorcycle rally starts this Friday, and over 700,000 people are expecting to be aggressively exchanging Covid-19 variants.
If I were a member of the public health infrastructure in neighboring states, I would quarantine everyone entering my state from South Dakota for 2 weeks:
Crowds of bikers are rumbling their way toward South Dakota’s Black Hills this week for the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, raising fears that COVID-19 infections will be unleashed among the 700,000 people expected to show up at the event.
The rally, which starts Friday, has become a haven for those eager to escape coronavirus precautions. Last year, the rally hardly slowed down, with roughly 460,000 people attending. Masks were mostly ditched as bikers crowded into bars, tattoo parlors and rock shows — which afterward offered a lesson in how massive gatherings could spread the coronavirus across the country.
This year, the 81st iteration of the rally is expected to be even bigger, drawing people from around the U.S. and beyond, despite concerns about the highly contagious Delta variant.
Seriously: Mandatory quarantines for everyone from South Dakota, and it will take at least the requisite 2 weeks before the courts slap you down.
………
This year, the city is embracing the crowds. Republican Gov. Kristi Noem has given the rally her blessing and will appear in a charity ride. The event is a boon for tourism, powering over $800 million in sales, according to the state Department of Tourism.
The rally is happening as other giant summer events — including state fairs and music festivals like Lollapalooza — are returning around the U.S. In Wisconsin, health officials say nearly 500 coronavirus cases may be linked to the crowds that attended Milwaukee Bucks games or gathered outside the team’s arena — estimated as high as 100,000 one night — during their push to the NBA championship.
The Sturgis Motorcycle Rally’s defenders argue that open air is plentiful on the meandering highways and in the campgrounds where many bikers stay. But contact tracers last year reported 649 virus cases from every corner of the country linked to the rally, including one death. A team from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention concluded in a published study that the 2020 rally “ had many characteristics of a superspreading event.”
It did not just, "Have many characteristics of a superspreading event," it WAS a superspreading event.
If these people want to jump off a cliff, I guess that it's their business, except for the fact that each one of them will take a few dozen people with them.
*Pronounced in Japanese, "baka ni tsukeru kusuri wanai", which means, "There is no medicine for stupidity." Apologies for any inaccuracies in the text, I do not know Japanese.
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