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The 460 thousand cyclists that met in August in South Dakota, indifferent to the new coronavirus pandemic, led to 260,000 new cases of Covid-19, scientists estimated, in a study released Tuesday.
This number would make this meeting cyclists, which lasted ten days, called the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, the largest documented coronavirus spread event until today in the USA.
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 area that is invaded each year by an “army” of motorcyclists.
Estes The data confirmed the number of people who went camping, walked, drank, ate and listened 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 cyclists.
When crossing the geographic data with the official numbers of Covid-19 cases during the month of August, the 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 United States between August 2 and September 2, with an estimated economic cost of US $ 12.2 billion (US $ 10.4 billion euros), based on a study that had quantified each non-fatal case at $ 46,000.
In South Dakota alone, the the number of cases increased during the summer, rising from around 100 new cases per 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.
Is statistical analysis is only an approximation, as no one followed or tested individual riders. On the other hand, it was not published by a scientific journal using 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.
