As much as I do feel COVID is a real threat and that the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally probably helped spread it somewhat, this paper (and even more so, the article) far overstates the case.
Copying over some key points from the underlying paper [1]:
> 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.
> If we conservatively assume that all of these cases were non-fatal, then these cases represent a cost of over $12.2 billion, based on the statistical cost of a COVID-19 case of $46,000 estimated by Kniesner and Sullivan (2020).
The Kniesner and Sullivan paper cited [2] gets to the value of $46,000 by using the Department of Transportation's "value per statistical life" of about $10 million per death (scaled down to ~$11k per asymptomatic case), which is not a public health cost estimate. It's probably far higher than what hospitals and the health system spends per case.
Not only that, but the paper claims, without any controls, that ALL case count increases in counties that sent lots of people to the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in the weeks following it were caused by the Rally itself. They did not control for any other factors (e.g., the baseline spread of COVID in adjacent counties with lower attendance.) This is unplausible, given that other factors and events (e.g., college parties, indoors dining) may have also contributed.
The rally was a bad idea but this is junk science. The public health cost estimate is based on the assumption that asymptomatic cases somehow cost $11,000 each. That is obviously nonsense.
The authors spend 0 pages describing the basis for the $11,000 cost of asymptomatic cases. In fact they just blindly accepted the estimate from Kniesner and Sullivan (2020), who picked a number without doing any calculation of actual costs. So I stand by my assessment that this is junk science.
I didn't see where the $11,000 estimate for asymptomatic cases came from (can anyone point to exactly where that's from?)
However, if it is the case that the authors did use that estimate for a per-asymptomatic case cost, then I think it's perfectly valid to throw out the rest of the paper as nonsense. I mean, the only reason anyone is talking about this paper at all is because the top-line number is so outrageously high. If a fundamental calculation going into that number is that patently ridiculous, I don't care if you have 15 pages or 1500 pages, adding more pages of numbers can't get around the absurdity of the underlying primary assumption.
Replying to my own comment, I found the paper where they got the 11k from, it's page 7 on this link: http://ftp.iza.org/dp13632.pdf.
This analysis is complete, utter, and total bullshit. They took a "value per statistical life" number of $11 million, then pulled a semi random 0.3% out of their ass to account for an $11k cost per asymptomatic case. At no point did they actually attempt to account anywhere for the true cost of treating (or, in this case not treating) an asymptomatic case.
Aren’t all world-wide c19 measures made on assumptions? Slowly people are realizing that such assumption-based „science“ might not have been that scientific at all.
I’ve heard that CDC has corrected down c19-related deaths to a merely 6% of the initially c19-reported deaths. The other 94% had other health issues as well and it can’t be said any longer that their death is related to c19. Isn’t that true?
Can you please try a simple web search[0] instead of choosing to spread misinformation by couching it in a question? The CDC did not “correct down” anything; this bad faith argument is like saying that someone who was hit by a car didn’t die from getting hit by a car because the death certificate says they died from “brain haemorrhage”.
Only 6% of fatalities were listed as "only COVID-19 related", which means removing every fatality listed with a preexisting conditions. I don't see how that number is at all helpful for measuring the risk level to any general population.
Besides the other 94%, simply not dying is not the best metric either. The better metric is causing any serious harm, not just fatalities.
No, it means that 94% still died due to COVID, but had pre-existing conditions that made them more susceptible. These are not people that likely would have been on the brink of death otherwise... that is the common misunderstanding in this misinformation.
Over 40% of the US is obese, for example, which increases your likelihood of a fatal outcome. So if you are obese and 40, it’s unlikely that you’d otherwise die in 2020. But if you get Covid and die from it, you’re a part of that 94%.
I said "besides the other 94%" meaning "even ignoring the others 94% who died with preexisting conditions" ... dying itself shouldn't be the only concern, even to those without existing conditions. As there is plenty of evidence of long-term harm to people who survived.
I don't see how that is at odds with anything you said.
That’s my point. It’s all about assumptions. Exactly as with the article being discussed in this thread.
Such articles have little value to understanding truth. But they help with superspreading fear.
Exactly. That’s the point —- it’s all about assumptions being made for the other 94%. And it’s easy to come up with assumptions. And it’s hard to understand the truth.
No. The death being due to covid isn’t in dispute. It’s about characterizing who is at most risk. You can be young and have health problems while still living for many more decades, but then you got Covid, died, and now you’re part of the 94%. Given 40% of the US is obese and would fit into this 94%, that’s not something to then ignore and say therefore only 6% of the population could be affected by this. That’s an incorrect understanding of the statistics.
This misrepresentation has been dangerously incorrectly stated either intentionally or ignorantly by people who have an agenda to push, and that agenda isn’t in service to public health.
That's one way to interpret the story but that's not how would suggest to understand things. Given your explanation model we could easily argue that every dead person which tested positive for herpes will be accounted to herpes. And a huge chunk of the population has it.
> That dollar amount is based on another estimation that an average of $46,000 is spent on each patient who tests positive for COVID-19.
Anyone have an idea on where that dollar amount came from? If many infections are asymptomatic then surely that number could only be associated with people who exhibit complications.
> Using standard assumptions provided by the CDC, we estimate that as of July 27, 2020, the actual number of cumulative Covid-19 cases in the U.S. is about 47 million with almost 1 million involving hospitalizations. Applying value per statistical life (VSL) and relative severity/injury estimates from the Department of Transportation (DOT), we estimate an overall non-fatal unadjusted valuation of $2.2 trillion for the U.S. with a weighted average value of about $46,000 per case.
Note that they're not saying the health care or direct costs are $46,000 but instead that it is a statistically useful value -- and it only applies to non-fatal cases of COVID-19, so it actually excludes the "worst case" outcome. As a result, it's an alarming number, but it's meant to illustrate how much the government might consider reasonable to spend to prevent folks from getting COVID-19 -- its impact to the economy, and it has to be balanced against the significant economic impact that other COVID mitigations have already had, particularly for those who have not been at risk of getting or spreading COVID-19 but still are economically disadvantaged by the mitigations.
It's kind of a brutal way of thinking about it. How much is one life worth, in dollars, for regulation and decision-making purposes? I haven't read it, but https://muse.jhu.edu/book/64735 came up in Google searches and looks moderately interesting and relevant here.
It doesn't seem strange at all. None of the protests have had anything close to the sheer size of the rally, nor have they been attracting participants from such a broad area. Most of the protests have been very localized in size and scope, so while they may help spread the coronavirus within a community, they have much less potential for spreading coronavirus between communities.
It didn't get any appreciable national coverage because nobody broke anything, but the size of the march was roughly ~10% of the in-the-city-limits population of the city. Judging by the number of colleagues and friends we encountered, a substantial fraction of those marching were local.
"Researchers concluded that more than 266,000 cases were tied to the event attended by more than 460,000 individuals.
[...]
At least 260 cases in 11 states have been officially connected to the rally by government officials.
[...]
Most people who attended the event did not take coronavirus precautions like wearing masks and social distancing, The Associated Press reported at the time."
I am trying to parse that first blurb “tied to the event”. Are they saying that of the 460k that went to the event, 260k of them are somehow associated with a coronavirus case? It’s not really clear what “tied to” means in the article at least.
> This study uses newly collected data on protests in 315 of the largest U.S. cities to estimate the impacts of mass protests on social distancing and COVID-19 case growth. Event-study analyses provide strong evidence that net stay-at-home behavior increased following protest onset, consistent with the hypothesis that non-protesters’ behavior was substantially affected by urban protests. This effect was not fully explained by the imposition of city curfews. Estimated effects were generally larger for persistent protests and those accompanied by media reports of violence. Furthermore, we find no evidence that urban protests reignited COVID-19 case growth during the more than three weeks following protest onset. We conclude that predictions of broad negative public health consequences of Black Lives Matter protests were far too narrowly conceived.
It’s hard or impossible to find pictures of protests where the majority are not wearing masks, the opposite was true here. Also people were drinking and standing around, hardly the same thing.
""we do not condemn these gatherings as risky for COVID-19 transmission. We support them as vital to the national public health and to the threatened health specifically of Black people in the United States." The letter conceded that mass protests carried the risk of spreading coronavirus": https://reason.com/2020/06/04/george-floyd-protesters-corona...
Those are nice gestures and statements but all it shows is that experts can be pressured to go along with political fads. 20,000+ african americans have died due to covid. Wagging the finger at any and all people wishing to gather for events except one particular group helps nobody. Furthermore, this has been politicized so much that contact tracers have been asked NOT to ask about people's protest activity. Either all mass outdoor gatherings are dangerous, or none are.
Indeed. And strange how putting c19-positive elderlies back from hospital into nursery homes (presumably contaminating many others as reported from NY) hasn’t been called a superspreading effect yet.
I was there group of people 200 strong none of them got sick all still in contact after we got back how is it that their statistics like that when I know of 200 people that never got sick? No one no one wore masks fuck masks. It's a fake virus you retards it kills 003% that's so low I'm not even worried about vaccines let the people who are going to die from it die
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24410471
http://ftp.iza.org/dp13670.pdf