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The 460,000 motorcyclists who met in August in South Dakota, indifferent to the new coronavirus pandemic, caused 260,000 new cases of covid-19, scientists estimated, in a study released Tuesday.
This number would make this biker gathering, which lasted ten days, called the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, the largest coronavirus spread event documented to date in the US..
The study, conducted by economists at the University of San Diego and published by the Institute for Labor Economics (IZA), is a statistical approximation based on anonymous mobility data from mobile phones in and around the small town of Sturgis, a sparsely populated rural region that is invaded each year by an “army” of motorcyclists.
These data made it possible to verify the number of people who came to camp, walk, drink, eat and listen to the concerts, mostly without a mask, during the 80th edition of the initiative, from August 7 to 16.
The same source of information also made it possible to identify the regions of origin of the ‘cyclists’.
By crossing the geographic data with the official numbers of covid-19 cases during the month of August, the researchers estimated the wave of infections born in Sturgis and spread throughout the country: 266,796 new cases, which represents almost a fifth ( 19%) of the 1.4 million cases detected in the US between August 2 and September 2, with an estimated economic cost of 12.2 billion dollars (10.4 billion euros), based on a study that had quantified each non-fatal case at $ 46,000.
In South Dakota alone, the number of cases increased over the summer, from about 100 new cases a day in early August to 300 by the end of the month, according to the Covid Tracking Project, but the death toll remained low. with one death per day, on average.
This statistical analysis is only an approximation, as no one followed and tested the cyclists individually.
On the other hand, it was not published by a scientific journal through peer reading, therefore, without an independent scientist having evaluated its methodology.
Also, the number of cases rose equally across the central US during the summer, and not just in South Dakota.
