
A Superspreading Event: The Sturgis Motorcycle Rally and Covid-19 [pdf] - localhost
http://ftp.iza.org/dp13670.pdf
======
listenallyall
Figure 7 of the paper appears to show a large spike in cases in the "high
inflow" counties, at 18-23 days and 24+ days post-Sturgis start (Aug 3).

However, a quick review of the maps in Figure 1 identifies those counties as
Clark, NV (Las Vegas), Maricopa, AZ (Phoenix) and Jefferson/Arapahoe/Weld, CO
(Denver Metro). None of those counties' own data reporting seems to match up
with this supposed spike in cases that the paper suggests, starting around Aug
21.

[https://media.southernnevadahealthdistrict.org/download/COVI...](https://media.southernnevadahealthdistrict.org/download/COVID-19/updates/September/20200908-COVID-19-Trends-
Clark-County-PUBLIC.pdf)

[https://phdata.maricopa.gov/Dashboard/e10a16d8-921f-4aac-b92...](https://phdata.maricopa.gov/Dashboard/e10a16d8-921f-4aac-b921-26d95e638a45?e=false&vo=viewonly)

[https://www.jeffco.us/4007/COVID-19-Case-
Summary](https://www.jeffco.us/4007/COVID-19-Case-Summary)

Clark and Maricopa are clearly heading downwards. The Denver Metro graphs are
a little more vague, you could maybe suggest there has been an uptick in cases
but you'd be hard-pressed to definitively say there is a "spike" that
contrasts with the long-term trend.

I'm having some difficulty squaring the paper's case data with the county
governments' own counts.

------
neilmock
If you look at the parameters for the "valuation" of a SARS-CoV-2 infection,
they are hard to take seriously. They are based on a mapping of typical
workplace injuries to viral infections. This is the paper referenced:
[http://ftp.iza.org/dp13632.pdf](http://ftp.iza.org/dp13632.pdf).

A purely asymptomatic infection is valued at $11,000

A symptomatic but non-hospitalized infection is valued at $33,000

If you are in the hospital for any reason with an infection, $512,000

If you are in the ICU for any reason with an infection, $1,100,000

If you are in the ICU on a ventilator, $2,900,000

~~~
chishaku
> they are hard to take seriously.

Why? What convention would you use?

If you think these are estimates of related healthcare costs, you should
probably re-read the paper.

~~~
neilmock
I would not value the public health cost dollar estimate of an asymptomatic
infection at 11k. I would not value the public cost dollar estimate of a non-
hospitalized infection at 33k.

~~~
mumblemumble
They do have some discussion in there about the option of valuing asymptomatic
cases at $0. So it's not like they didn't think of this option. But they went
with $11,000 as the default option in their model, anyway. This leaves me
thinking we may be looking at a Chesterton's Fence situation: the reason isn't
obvious to me, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist or isn't a good one.

I'm guessing there is some subtext here that an armchair analyst isn't going
to catch from reading just this paper. Perhaps, for example, the cost of
asymptomatic cases is there because "asymptomatic" doesn't actually mean "no
symptoms at all", it means "the patient didn't subjectively feel ill enough to
seek care." In which case there probably is some real cost to factor into the
average. Or perhaps the argument is that asymptomatic cases still carry some
risk of secondary effects such as myocarditis that absolutely need to be taken
into account and averaged into the group from a public health perspective.

It's hard to say for sure, since the paper clearly isn't written for a non-
expert audience and therefore doesn't spend much time on defining jargon.

~~~
neilmock
I'm probably going to perma-delete my HN account after this, but this is my
main complaint with popularized scientific research being parroted for
political purposes. "The paper isn't written for a non-expert audience" yet
one of the authors is going on Anderson Cooper tonight to talk about it to a
non-expert audience.

~~~
rblatz
Wouldn't that be the best way to communicate this to a non-expert audience?
Bring the expert in to explain the report and fill in the context that the
layman is missing compared to an expert?

------
mcguire
" _Furthermore, event organizers ... warned attendees that some “South Dakota
tribal lands may be restricted with checkpoints to protect residents from
COVID-19 exposure”_ "

I bet that was fun.

" _Using a synthetic control approach, ... [f]or the state of South Dakota as
a whole we find that the Sturgis event increase COVID-19 cases by 3.6 to 3.9
cases per 1,000 population as of September 2nd 2020. This represents an
increase of over 35 percent relative to the 9.7 cases per 1,000 population in
South Dakota on July 31, 2020 (South Dakota Department of Health 2020)._ "

That's pretty substantial.

------
avolcano
The amount of travel involved in this thing is staggering:

> The cellphone tracking data showed about 10% of Sturgis attendees hailed
> from within South Dakota, with about 19% from border states and 72% from
> across the rest of the country, with heavy attendance from Arizona,
> California, Colorado, Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, Washington and Wyoming.

I find this aspect far more upsetting than the stupidity of the event itself.
It's one thing when a bunch of locals decide to congregate in an environment
they really shouldn't be, but another thing entirely when it's 400,000 people
biking across the country.

Ironically - or perhaps not - I saw an NPR article ~a week ago[1] indicating
the infection rate _in_ Sturgis and its county, while certainly higher than it
was before the rally, wasn't as catastrophic as you'd expect. Apparently, many
people who live in Sturgis left town or just tried to avoid contact with
anyone that weekend. Can't find any up to date information on whether the
infection rate has increased since then with more time/testing, though.

[1] [https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-
updates/2020/0...](https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-
updates/2020/09/02/908874086/states-report-coronavirus-cases-linked-to-
sturgis-s-d-motorcycle-rally)

~~~
phobosanomaly
Arizona saw this early in the pandemic in cities along the California border
like Lake Havasu.

They had zero mask restrictions for a while, and cases were low.

Then they opened restaurants and bars, which were flooded by thousands of
Californians coming across the border every weekend and not taking any
precautions and Arizona's ICUs quickly reached capacity.

[https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-05-11/californ...](https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-05-11/californians-
are-crowding-arizonas-lake-havasu)

"While many locals are grateful for the tourism dollars amid a global
downturn, some are worried that the crowds could cause a rise in coronavirus
cases locally and overwhelm the city’s only hospital, which has just 16 ICU
beds for its 55,000 residents."

~~~
natrik
The article and the quote from the article you linked do not support your
statement: "Arizona's ICUs quickly reached capacity".

The article is dated May 11.

[https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&...](https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&pto=aue&rurl=translate.google.com&sl=sv&sp=nmt4&tl=en&u=https://www.ssi.dk/aktuelt/nyheder/2020/influenzasasonen-2019-20-var-
en-usadvanlig-sason&usg=ALkJrhjlxz7caWLvMrg-oZ7dyGrtYn-xdQ)

2822 excess mortality for Denmark in its flu season of 2017/2018\.
Extrapolating Denmarks population to Swedens population we would expect 5000
excess mortality for a comparable bad flu season. Current Sweden COVID related
deaths are 5800. Less than 16 deaths a day in Sweden since July 2. Less than 8
deaths a day since July 19.

Swedens COVID related deaths will not go above 6000. Seems to be a 0.06%
mortality rate, heavily weighted towards the aged. 6000 deaths is still a lot,
yes.

~~~
phobosanomaly
So, article was May 11 when the influx started.

This is June 25th.

"Fewer than 200 ICU beds available in Arizona as state reports more than
60,000 coronavirus cases."

[https://www.abc15.com/news/state/fewer-than-200-icu-beds-
ava...](https://www.abc15.com/news/state/fewer-than-200-icu-beds-available-in-
arizona-as-state-reports-more-than-60-000-coronavirus-cases)

This is July 3rd.

"State health officials say the capacity of hospital intensive care units is
at an all-time high of 91%.

The number of people hospitalized Thursday due to a suspected or confirmed
case of COVID-19 was 3,013, according to the Arizona Department of Health
Services. It’s the first time reaching 3,000."

[https://apnews.com/46a23bcf72b624dc25d7703dc269c727](https://apnews.com/46a23bcf72b624dc25d7703dc269c727)

That's a pretty scary timeline. Things got real serious real quick in less
than a month.

~~~
natrik
Interesting, I agree the 91% of ICU capacity does seem alarming, but what
aspect of that is hospitals optimizing for maximal usage of beds for financial
reasons? I would want to see how much an ICU was used in previous years and
how often it reached 90% capacity.

Also given it was 91% on July 3rd, I'd be interested in knowing what the
situation was on August 3rd and September 3rd.

~~~
phobosanomaly
That's a great question.

I found this plot from Arizona Department of Public Health.'Hospital Bed Usage
& Availability' sub-tab 'Number of Intensive Care Unit Available and In-use at
Arizona Hospitals.'

[https://azdhs.gov/preparedness/epidemiology-disease-
control/...](https://azdhs.gov/preparedness/epidemiology-disease-
control/infectious-disease-epidemiology/covid-19/dashboards/index.php)

Everything is reported in percentages, so I don't know how the absolute number
of beds shifted as a result of temporary increases in ICU capacity.

~~~
natrik
Great graphs on that site, 57% of ICU in beds in use by COVID patients on 7/13
to 13% on 9/7\. Seems like the peak has passed, but like you said it could be
due to an increase in beds provided.

------
jhanschoo
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UK2FBEpmlUo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UK2FBEpmlUo)

If you'd like to have a better idea of what the rally itself was like and its
attendees, All Gas No Brakes did a bit on it.

------
uslic001
I doubt as many people were infected as they state as only one death has been
reported so far. If as many were as infected as they claim many more deaths
would have occurred by now.

------
m0zg
"Experts": 400K people for a few days is a "superspreader event"

Also "experts": there is "no evidence" hundreds of thousands of people yelling
slogans in the street for 100+ days are spreading COVID.

The two can't be true at the same time.

~~~
pchristensen
Sure they can - read this comment:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24411270](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24411270)

~~~
m0zg
No evidence was presented in that comment, other than evidence of political
bias.

~~~
pchristensen
In the second paragraph, yes. The first paragraph pretty clearly explained the
difference:

"The inside/outside dynamic is not the only part of the location that matters
for the dangers these events present. The big protests mainly occurred in big
cities and were mainly attended by locals. The Sturgis rally happens in the
middle of nowhere, people come from all over, and then head back home to
places that are generally more rural. Sturgis is therefore much more likely to
spread the virus to people and places who wouldn't have had much exposure
otherwise."

~~~
m0zg
> mainly attended by locals

Significant percentage of the arrestees are _not_ locals. Look it up. Booking
records are public.

~~~
tzs
...which is pretty much completely irrelevant when it comes to the percentage
of locals at a protest, because the number of people arrested at a protest is
only a tiny percentage of the number of attendees and is not a random sample.

~~~
m0zg
It's not "irrelevant" when it comes to spreading COVID though.

------
29athrowaway
In Texas, thousands of people attend drag races without masks.

[http://twitch.tv/murda](http://twitch.tv/murda)

Attendees do not seem to care, the venue does not enforce their policies,
authorities do not take action...

I would not be surprised if there is a massive outbreak COVID-19 in that town.

------
sacks2k
really? And many thousands of protesters all across the country (many not
wearing masks and certainly not social distancing) aren't a 'superspreading
event'?

I don't think I've even seen one article mentioning it...because racism.

~~~
reportingsjr
Almost every bit of protesting footage I've seen has the majority of people
wearing masks, which is a huge deal. In the footage of the motorcycle rally in
sturgis, I have seen almost no one wearing masks. On top of this, people
protesting were almost exclusively outdoors whereas there are tons of stores,
bars, etc in sturgis that people went in.

Your comment is just ridiculous political pandering, trying to focus the topic
other events that aren't similar in the slightest.

~~~
slg
>On top of this, people protesting were almost exclusively outdoors whereas
there are tons of stores, bars, etc in sturgis that people went in.

The inside/outside dynamic is not the only part of the location that matters
for the dangers these events present. The big protests mainly occurred in big
cities and were mainly attended by locals. The Sturgis rally happens in the
middle of nowhere, people come from all over, and then head back home to
places that are generally more rural. Sturgis is therefore much more likely to
spread the virus to people and places who wouldn't have had much exposure
otherwise.

Also we can't have this conversation while ignoring the false equivalency of
these two events. There is a fundamental difference in the urgency of
attending a protest versus attending the Sturgis rally. If they both presented
the exact same danger to the population, Sturgis would still be a more
egregious gathering due to being an entertainment event. We are in the middle
of a pandemic. We can cut down on these large entertainment gatherings whether
it is Sturgis or Coachella.

~~~
LiNeXT
> There is a fundamental difference in the urgency of attending a protest
> versus attending the Sturgis rally.

The constitution deliberately makes no such distinction.

~~~
slg
How is that relevant? No one is talking about the Constitution. Neither I nor
the parent comments I responded to ever mentioned that Strugis rally should
have been shutdown by the government. We can criticize something or point out
that it shouldn't have happened without us needing to have the Supreme Court
weigh in.

From a moral perspective, getting people killed in order to have some fun is
less defensible than getting people killed in support of civil rights. I
wouldn't think that is a controversial statement.

~~~
LiNeXT
> How is that relevant?

The relevance is obvious.

