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Worlds Largest Virus Party?

theprestige said:
At least this has the merit of being a testable prediction. And it's a fairly easy one to test: All we have to do is wait. For how long, do you think? Do we wait one year? Two? Five? Ten?
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I'd give them a year... If Trump gets reelected he might bail them out, if not they're screwed. They were in trouble before covid as young people weren't buying their bikes.
 
SuburbanTurkey said:
It's a manpower heavy endeavor, and even then, the people live in filthy conditions for the duration.

I fully expect that Sturgis will be a stand-out hotpot for Covid in the region after the rally. I would love to be wrong about this.
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Sounds like it will be, for sure.

I guess by the same reasoning, we should expect Sturgis to be a hot spot for communicable diseases of all kinds, every year. Influenza, for example. I wonder if the CDC has data on hot spots for various contagion that could give us some idea of how this would play out.

Now that I think about it, I wonder if there's similar data, showing similar rates of transmission for similar diseases, from events like spring break in Florida and popular conventions like ComicCon. I know that spring break has already been implicated in the recent Covid hot spot in Florida. It'll be interesting, if depressing, to see if a similar dynamic plays out in Sturgis.
 
nelsondogg said:
I'd give them a year... If Trump gets reelected he might bail them out, if not they're screwed. They were in trouble before covid as young people weren't buying their bikes.
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I was thinking in terms of evidence of mass deaths, from data showing used Harleys flooding the market. Totally uninterested in the ultimate fate of Harley as a company.
 
theprestige said:
I guess it depends if you think the local labor contracted to support the event are part of the problem.
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It does get harder to host an annual event if your event staff tends to die after the event. Don't ask how I know this.
 
ponderingturtle said:
That seems to be applied to things several orders of magnitude smaller than this will be. I mean they call a party that only gets 30 people infected a super spreader event. When this gets 30,000 people infected doesn't it deserve some more impactful name?
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Hyper spreader.
 
I was out along I-90 / 94 this week and saw several groups of bikers stopping for food etc. Most of them were wearing masks or face coverings inside around town, even in South Dakota where there isn't a mandate. I did note that most of them were older and maybe not super healthy-looking.

^^ This is an anecdote only.

Fun Fact - the rally is actually called the Buffalo Chip, but everyone just says Sturgis.
 
theprestige said:
I assume it's because you chair the Annual Feeding Event Planning Committee for the North American Association of Active Vampires. The En-Double-A-A-V.
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I can neither confirm nor deny any association, past or present, with the En-Double-A-A-V.
 
carlitos said:
I was out along I-90 / 94 this week and saw several groups of bikers stopping for food etc. Most of them were wearing masks or face coverings inside around town, even in South Dakota where there isn't a mandate. I did note that most of them were older and maybe not super healthy-looking.

^^ This is an anecdote only.

Fun Fact - the rally is actually called the Buffalo Chip, but everyone just says Sturgis.
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I was in SD a few weeks ago - Keystone, Deadwood, and points in between. In Keystone and Deadwood, very, very few other people wore masks. We only saw one other family in Keystone wearing them. Deadwood was better, but not by much.

I am seeing photos from Sturgis, from friends I know who are there. Not a mask in sight.
 
SuburbanTurkey said:
That's something, but the virus lingers in the people that remain behind. Bars and hotels and all the other business necessary to support such a large endeavor require legions of people to operate, and many of the workers are local to Sturgis or, like a younger me, brought in from neighboring communities.

I mean, there's nothing really there to support all these people, it has to be brought in. The place I worked was a cow pasture for the rest of the year. We cut down the grass, marked out RV spots with spray paint, and set up masses of stages and food stands and all the other things necessary for human life. It's a manpower heavy endeavor, and even then, the people live in filthy conditions for the duration.

I fully expect that Sturgis will be a stand-out hotpot for Covid in the region after the rally. I would love to be wrong about this.
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For sure. I agree completely. I meant "at least" in the truest sense, as in it's the least they can do!. Sturgis could be properly ****** for a long time, and these morons will be taking back whatever they get to all 50 states. SAD!
 
carlitos said:
Fun Fact - the rally is actually called the Buffalo Chip, but everyone just says Sturgis.
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That might be a recent thing. When I worked there, the Chip was just a private campground where most of the major events took place, such as concerts. Wikipedia claims they recently incorporated as their own town, likely to avoid ordinances and/or taxes from the city of Sturgis.

Plenty of events take place outside of the Chip though. Downtown sturgis is pretty much slammed the whole time with bikers.
 
nelsondogg said:
I'd give them a year... If Trump gets reelected he might bail them out, if not they're screwed. They were in trouble before covid as young people weren't buying their bikes.
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I thought Harley-Davidson was on Trump’s ****-list. Didn’t he want people to boycott them? And then his tariffs ruined the profit margin.
 
Thermal said:
A quarter million of these nitwits. Just stunning, as a niche group of imbeciles. Hopefully they don't get out much away from their circle of science-uncomprehending biker friends.
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That was the Cheltenham festival in March.
 
Belz... said:
Collateral damage. In the end the damaging side will be hurt more.
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My view of collateral damage is that it's justified only when two conditions* are met:

First, the destruction of the target has a clear military value.

Second, that the amount of collateral damage is proportional to the expected military value of destroying the target.

Obviously this is a social situation, not a military one, so feel free to substitute "social value" for military value. Without resorting to bigotry, can you present a theory of social value arising from the thousands of deaths that you believe will solve whatever the problem is?
 
From what I understand, the mayor decided to go ahead because most of the people were coming anyway. It was a choice of have a plan and 150,000 people or don't have a plan and have 150,000 people anyway.
 
Another thing worth pointing out is that local sightseeing is a big part of the rally. Often bikers will go on long rides during the day to place like Mt. Rushmore, Deadwood, or other popular tourist spots, and return to Sturgis in the evening for the partying.

Everything within a couple hours drive is probably getting a nice dose of outside biological profile. A mitigating factor is that many of these attractions are outdoors. It's probably possible to go to places like Mt. Rushmore and still socially distance, but I doubt many of these bikers really care to try.

Apparently they won't be going to bear country USA though. Normally bikers and other people in unsafe vehicles would ride in a "courtesy shuttle" for the drive through zoo, but those are discontinued due to covid.
 
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