[ExI] sturgis - washington post

Mon Oct 19 20:10:21 UTC 2020

On Mon, Oct 19, 2020 at 2:51 AM spike jones via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> > On Behalf Of Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat
> >
>
> >>... The number comes from the suspected number of people who caught at
> the
>
> > rally.  If you take half million-randomly chosen yanks and compare to
>
> > the number traceable to the rally, it appears the rally catch rate was
> about half the average.
>
> >...Apples and oranges, don't you think? Unless Sturgis rally attendees are
>
> like a random sample of US-Americans (what you mean by 'yanks' and not,
> say, New Englanders)...
>
>
>
> All USians are yanks.  I have heard that is a generally accepted term, so
> I use it for us.
>

My parenthetical comment was to make sure that's what _you_ meant by the
term.

> >...then it's the wrong comparison. Do attendees randomly come from all
> over the US?
>
> Hard to say.  I would think in general riders are more likely to attend if
>
they live closer, but I know there are a lot of clubs that love a good long
>
ride out to Sturgis.
>

I don't know either and my causal search online didn't find what I really
wanted: something like where most Sturgis attendees came from and the
routes they mainly took to get there.

> I might be overlooking something really obvious here.  If people do ride
> far,
>
it represents several days in which they have little or no contact with
> others.
>

I would presume they have to stop to get food or find lodging or use the
restroom and whatnot. But I don't know. And maybe some of them camp, bring
all the food and drink they need, and don't mind relieving themselves
outside. I don't know the numbers here. My guess would be that during the
travel, they'd have little contact. And this would be better than, say, if
they carpooled or, worse, all took big touring buses -- where if one person
had it, they might quickly spread it to others in the car or on the bus.

> It might be that alone that can explain it: they are more likely to arrive
> at
>
Sturgis without having caught in the previous few days, when they were
>
on the road.  Creating a statistical model for that is very difficult, but
> it is
>
a compelling argument, possibly more so than my notion that sunshine
>
on bare skin raised vitamin D levels, offering a bit of extra protection
>
(that notion under-accounts for the difference.)
>

Again, we'd have to have a good idea of what the percentages are here.

> My own club went to Sturgis a little later (by three weeks (they are the
>
older crowd (even compared to the geriatric Sturgis main event crowd
>
(so they prefer to not camp on the ground (so they go after the main
>
event (the few hotels around Sturgis are available then (and I can
>
cheerfully report that no one caught and no one crashed (I really worry
>
about this crowd (several are over 80 now.)))))))
>

That's good to hear. Of course, the modeling that seems correct here --
given all the uncertainties -- did point to something like a few hundred
people getting infected, so maybe it's not just a good outcome but a very
likely one.

> No matter how we try to analyze this, there are unknowns and speculation,
>
but if one goes to about 2 wks after the rally (late August) I see only one
>
state which one can recognize a surge, and that is in South Dakota where
>
the rally was held.  Irony: the actual ground zero, the town of Sturgis,
> didn't
>
have a surge.
>

I agree about the unknowns here... But this plays both ways. One can't
really be sure what happened, but then it also means one shouldn't use the
event as a basis to prove much.

> On the other hand... several of those Midwest states are having huge surges
>
now, which cannot be reasonably traced to the Sturgis rally: it ended over
> 2 months ago.
>

Well, the WaPo article is saying this all started in late August, so that
does fit the 'Sturgis rally play a role' explanation. And I'd expect it to
follow from there: rally attendees traveling through or returning to those
places spread it to more people and it simply takes time for this to play
out. So, they're not saying, in the article, that Sturgis happened and
there was absolutely no new cases until October. (Of course, other things
happened between Sturgis and now, but that doesn't necessarily rule out
Sturgis being a contributor here.)

> An example is Idaho, which had a decline in the weeks following the
> rally.  The surge starting in mid September would have given enough time
> for healthy returners from Sturgis to catch back in their own home state
> after the rally.  This too must be offered as a possibility: bike clubs had
> post-rally parties with their stay-home friends and caught there?
>

I should know more about Idaho, but things to look for would be how Idaho
is different from surrounding states, especially with regard to COVID
restrictions. If my memory serves, they were pretty strict with
restrictions compared to other 'red' states.

> I am completely at a loss to explain the huge surge a full two months
> after the end of the rally.  I suppose we must look at school openings
> there as the most likely explanation, but if so, why didn’t the bikers see
> something similar?  I am watching for my own confirmation bias: I fully
> expected a catastrophic surge after the rally, and urged my own club to not
> go at all this year.  On the other hand, although it didn’t turn out as I
> expected, that was one prediction I am most pleased to have flubbed.  I
> have never been more pleased to be proven wrong than the non-super-spreader
> that was Sturgis 2020 (from what I can tell, it wasn’t even a
> normal-spreader (but I still cannot explain why.))
>

Well, Idaho lifted some restrictions in the beginning of September. There
was a push to do so in late August. I wonder if the smoke emergency delayed
or affected this too. Having gone through that in my area -- and my reading
was it was worse in Spokane and so likely in Idaho as well -- it was being
in lockdown for about two weeks. I mean no opening windows, only going
outside -- with a real breathing mask for me not those dinky N95s :) -- for
groceries, almost no contact with anyone else during this time. That could
have a big impact. But this is just me guessing.

spike
>
>
>
>
>
>
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Regards,

Dan
  Sample my Kindle books via:
http://author.to/DanUst
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