#Sturgis rally was ‘superspreading event,’ may be linked 19% of COVID cases last month
“#Sturgis rally was ‘superspreading event,’ may be linked 19% of COVID cases last month”
September 8, 2020 | 5:13pm
The paper, by researchers from San Diego State University’s Center for Health Economics & Policy Studies and the IZA Institute of Labor Economics, tracked cellphone data at the gathering attended by more than 460,000 mostly-maskless motorcycle enthusiasts amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
At one point, 90s pop-rock band Smash Mouth played a concert to thousands of attendees, with the frontman saying, “F–k that COVID shit!”
Researchers said that the event not only led to rising infections in the surrounding region, but also in the places across the nation attendees returned to after the event.
South Dakota experienced a 35 percent jump in cases, while counties in other states home to a significant number of attendees saw increases of 10.7 percent following the event.
“The Sturgis Motorcycle Rally represents a situation where many of the ‘worst-case scenarios’ for superspreading occurred simultaneously,” researchers concluded in the paper.
“The event was prolonged, included individuals packed closely together, involved a large out-of-town population (a population that was orders of magnitude larger than the local population), and had low compliance with recommended infection countermeasures such as the use of masks.”
The researchers estimate the event was linked to 266,796 — or 19 percent — of 1.4 million new cases recorded in the US between Aug. 2 2020 and Sept. 2.
At least one attendee, a 60-year-old Minnesota man, succumbed to the virus..
The researchers estimated that the rally resulted in $12.2 billion in health care costs — estimating an average of $46,000 in bills for every patient — a figure that doesn’t factor in costs associated with death.
Michael Ciaglo/Getty Images
The calculation provides a “ballpark estimate” of the economic impact of a superspreading event, as well as how “valuable restrictions on mass gatherings can be,” researchers wrote.
“This is enough to have paid each of the estimated 462,182 rally attendees $26,553.64 not to attend, researchers wrote.
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