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Sturgis Motorcycle Rally was 'superspreading event,' cost public health $12.2B
- swader999 6y agoStrange how none of the protests have any similar publicized effect like this event.
- notyourwork 6y agoIt's not strange, what is strange is your implied political swing instead of discussing the specific event in the article.
- blumomo 6y agoIndeed. 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.
- bananabreakfast 6y agoProbably because that's not what superspreading means?
- wtallis 6y agoIt 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.
- ISL 6y agoSeattle had 60,000+ masked people walking silently in the rain in June: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/thousands-march-in-seattle-in-silence-to-show-support-of-black-lives/ https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/thousands-march-in... 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.
- bananabreakfast 6y agoDon't forget the vast majority of attendees at the rally ignored all safety precautions, unlike most other large gatherings.
- RickJWagner 6y agoHave you got some source to cite, please? It's not the impression I have. I saw photos of large crowds, chanting and singing, etc. at the protests.
- grahamas 6y ago"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."
- SOLAR_FIELDS 6y agoI 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.
- rbecker 6y agoThat's because "Protests have been called ‘dangerous’ by chief medical officer, but research shows racism can be as deadly as coronavirus": https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/jun/12/black-lives-matter-australia-protest-will-blm-protests-spark-second-covid-19-coronavirus-wave-health-experts https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/jun/12/black... ""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-coronavirus-health-officials-disease/ https://reason.com/2020/06/04/george-floyd-protesters-corona... “In this moment the public health risks of not protesting to demand an end to systemic racism greatly exceed the harms of the virus.”: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/06/04/public-health-protests-301534 https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/06/04/public-hea...
- neither_color 6y agoThose 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. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/investigations-discovery/hospitalization-death-by-race-ethnicity.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/investi... https://www.businessinsider.com/nyc-contact-tracers-not-asking-people-attend-george-floyd-protest-2020-6#:~:text=New%20York%27s%20team%20of%20contact-tracers%2C%20who%20are%20trying,for%20Mayor%20Bill%20de%20Blasio%2C%20told%20The%20City https://www.businessinsider.com/nyc-contact-tracers-not-aski....
- manicdee 6y agoJust wear a mask and stop pointing the finger at people protesting institutionalised oppression as an excuse not to wear a mask.
- alphabettsy 6y agoIt’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.
- chishaku 6y agoBecause the same authors did not find a similar effect with the protests. http://ftp.iza.org/dp13388.pdf http://ftp.iza.org/dp13388.pdf > 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.
- nradov 6y agoThe 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.
- blumomo 6y agoAren’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.
- azinman2 6y agoThe hundreds of thousands of deaths are not an assumption. Nor are the people still in recovery or with other probably permanent damage.
- blumomo 6y agoI’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?
- bananabreakfast 6y agoAnd I've heard that nothing you just said is true. Isn't that right? Hearsay is not an argument.
- blumomo 6y agoExactly. Use your own rationale!
- wtallis 6y ago> I’ve heard that CDC has corrected down c19-related deaths to a merely 6% of the initially c19-reported deaths. That sounds like the kind of big news you should have no trouble finding a citation for. > The other 94% had other health issues as well and it can’t be said any longer that their death is related to c19. That's a funny definition of "related". The presence of other contributing factors does not mean that none of the blame lies with the coronavirus.
- 2bluesc 6y ago> 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. Something doesn't seem to add up.
- paul7986 6y agoIt came from a political machine to enrage it's base against the other. Only a few months til the election and thus we'll see more & more stories that rile up both sides against each other. Downvoted (?) cause politics isnt allowed or you don't believe either side does such a thing?
- bananabreakfast 6y agoIt's incredible to me that someone like you believes that a report on a disease spreading could possibly be political
- paul7986 6y agoI wear a mask and believe its something to be concerned about. But, you don't think it has been politicized?
- lstamour 6y agoThe "discussion paper" cites https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3680348 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3680348 which in turn uses the vague "VSL" cited as DOT's $11 million per life. > 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 https://muse.jhu.edu/book/64735 came up in Google searches and looks moderately interesting and relevant here.
- klyrs 6y agoThe study was posted and discussed earlier today https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24410471 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24410471 http://ftp.iza.org/dp13670.pdf http://ftp.iza.org/dp13670.pdf
- throwaway122378 6y agoJust tried to find research on how much the nation wide BLM protests cost public health. Let me know if you find one.
- phsource 6y agoAs 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. [1] http://ftp.iza.org/dp13670.pdf http://ftp.iza.org/dp13670.pdf [2] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3680348 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3680348
- yehosef 6y agoWhen will it all end...
- lumberingjack 6y agoI 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
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- ykevinator 6y agoIf you dispute the dollar amount, what dollar amount would make you happy? It's still reckless immaturity.
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