There’s nothing quite like covering a story again a year later to bring it home how much time has passed during the pandemic. So it is with the Sturgis bike rally in South Dakota, held during the pre-vaccine times last year and considered a superspreader event. It was held again this year during the height of the Delta variant. The population of people who attend Sturgis are generally the anti-mask anti-vax type and of course there are no vaccination or mask requirements. Many attendees, and sadly many of the people they came in contact with, are going to die before placing an often needless tax on a breaking healthcare system. Reports state that there’s been a 450% rise in covid cases in South Dakota since the start of the Sturgis rally. This year it ran from Friday, August 6th to Saturday the 15th. South Dakota is 27th in the nation in vaccination rates. More than half a million people attended Sturgis this year. Here’s that report from CBS news:
South Dakota has seen a sharp increase in daily COVID-19 cases following the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in Meade County this month. Hundreds of thousands of bikers descended upon the area August 6-15, despite the Delta variant wreaking havoc on the U.S.
On August 4, the date closest to the start of the rally for which data was available, the state reported 657 active cases. On August 25, the state reported 3,655 active cases. That’s a 456% increase of active cases from before the start of the rally to two weeks after, according to the state’s department of health.
As of August 24, about two weeks from the start of the event, South Dakota saw a weekly positivity rate of 38.8%. The week leading up to the rally — July 30 to August 6 — the state’s weekly positivity rate was much lower, at 10.38%, the department of health data shows. The week before that, July 23-30, the positivity rate was just 6.10%.
The rate of daily cases increased 486% from August 6, when 80 new cases were reported, to August 23, when 469 cases were reported.
Meade County, where Sturgis is located, saw a 34.2% weekly positivity rate last week, according to the state department of health.
About 61% of the state’s population over age 12 have been administered at least one dose of vaccine, and 55% are fully vaccinated, the department’s data shows. In Meade County, 7,984 people have been vaccinated. With a population of 28,332, that’s about 28% of the county vaccinated.
CBS News quoted the city manager of Sturgis, who said of the non-vaccination requirements “We’re not going to start checking papers. I mean, that’s not really an American way.” In these people’s minds, the American way is stubbornly refusing to take a free vaccine or to wear a piece of cloth over their face for the greater good. The American way is dying in a crowded ICU hooked up to machines or being saddled with chronic health problems and tens of thousands in medical debt. I could never have imagined that anything like this would happen in my lifetime. At the same time I’m amazed that we have vaccines which are so safe and effective, and that so many people have the most ridiculous excuses not to get them.
This is Jody Perewitz, Sturgis’s 2021 Grand Marshall
