I Hope Everyone Had A Good Time At The Motorcycle Rally-- A Quarter Million More COVID-Cases And $12.2 Billion In Medical Costs

COVID-Kristi

Maybe more so than even governors Ron DeSantis (R-FL), Brian Kemp (R-GA), Doug Ducey (R-AZ) and Greg Abbott (R-TX), South Dakota Trumpist Governor Kristi Noem should face charges of manslaughter for the willful decision to shit-can public health requirements and infect her state-- and surrounding states-- with a deadly and preventable virus. If there ever is a prosecution-- keep dreamin'-- a document released yesterday by Dhaval Dave, Andrew Friedson, Drew McNichols and Joseph Sabia for the Institute of Labor Economics in Germany, will surely be part of the evidence against Noem. IZA DP No. 13670 is entitled The Contagion Externality of a Superspreading Event: The Sturgis Motorcycle Rally and COVID-19. They begin with a flat statement, much of which even a grade school student should know by now: "Large in-person gatherings without social distancing and with individuals who have traveled outside the local area are classified as the 'highest risk' for COVID-19 spread by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Between August 7 and August 16, 2020, nearly 500,000 motorcycle enthusiasts converged on Sturgis, South Dakota for its annual motorcycle rally. Large crowds, coupled with minimal mask-wearing and social distancing by attendees, raised concerns that this event could serve as a COVID-19 'super-spreader.'... [F]ollowing the Sturgis event, counties that contributed the highest inflows of rally attendees experienced a 7.0 to 12.5 percent increase in COVID-19 cases relative to counties that did not contribute inflows. Descriptive evidence suggests these effects may be muted in states with stricter mitigation policies (i.e., restrictions on bar/restaurant openings, mask-wearing mandates). We conclude that the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally generated public health costs of approximately $12.2 billion."

Why blame Noem? As the authors noted, "South Dakota’s public health response to the novel coronavirus outbreak has largely been a hands-off approach, centered around private personal responsibility. South Dakota was one of 8 states to never issue a statewide shelter-in-place order or a safer-at-home order. A recent assessment found South Dakota to have the least restrictive COVID-19 policy environment when assessing mask wearing mandates (none), travel restrictions (none), large gathering restrictions (none), statewide school restarts (district-level decisions), reopening of bars and restaurants (full indoor-dining permitted), work-from-home requirements (none) and temperature screenings (not required)."

They began with a quote by Steve Harwell, lead singer of Smash Mouth, a Sugar Ray rip off band which performed at the super-spreader event: "Now we’re all here together tonight. And we’re being human once again. Fuck that Covid shit." Hopefully someone will remember that if Smash Mouth is ever nominated for the Rock'n'Roll Hall of Fame.





In their intro, the authors wrote that "Restrictions on large gatherings were a near universal policy adopted by U.S. states following the initial U.S. coronavirus outbreak. As of August 29, 2020, when all states that had forced businesses closed had at least partially reopened, 29 states continued to ban gatherings of groups of over 50 individuals, a reflection, in part, of the resurgence of COVID-19 in the U.S. beginning in June 2020.Restrictions on large gatherings during a pandemic is a form of government regulation of quantity within a market to curb a negative externality. In that way, gathering restrictions are similar to public smoking bans, chemical emission standards, or vaccination mandates. In this case, the negative externality is due to infection risk, so the blanket nature of a gathering restriction is a key part of the containment strategy as a single mass gathering has the potential to generate a large number of cases, a phenomenon referred to as a 'superspreading event.' Indeed, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) deems 'large in-person gatherings where it is difficult for individuals to remain spaced at least 6 feet apart and attendees travel from outside the local area' among the highest risk activities for the spread of COVID-19 (CDC 2020). The risk of contagion of COVID-19 is exacerbated at such events if (i) there are high frequency, prolonged interactions between individuals, and (ii) pre-event COVID-19 case growth in the county hosting the event is elevated."

They noted that the Sturgis rally was a 10-day event with dozens of concerts-- like the Smash Mouth one-- live performances, races, poker tournaments, boxing matches, exhibitions, contests, tattoo artists, and bike shows that drew over 460,000 individuals to a city with a population of approximately 7,000 located in a county with a population of approximately 26,000. COVID-19 mitigation efforts at the Sturgis Rally were largely left to the "personal responsibility" of attendees, and post-opening day media reports suggest that social distancing and mask-wearing were quite rare in Sturgis. They refer to it as a "worst case scenario" for super-spreading. Their research found that foot traffic at restaurants and bars, hotels, entertainment venues, and retail establishments rose by as much as 90% during the event; that stay-at-home behavior declined among residents of Meade County; and that the Sturgis Rally caused spread of COVID-19 cases both locally and in the home counties of those who traveled to the Sturgis Rally and returned home. "[T]he Sturgis event increased COVID-19 cases in Meade County by 6.3 to 6.9 cases per 1,000 population as of September 2nd 2020, a month following the onset of events at the Sturgis Rally. For the state of South Dakota as a whole we find that the Sturgis event increase COVID-19 cases by 3.6 to 3.9 cases per 1,000 population as of September 2nd 2020. This represents an increase of over 35 percent relative to the 9.7 cases per 1,000 population in South Dakota on July 31, 2020."

They also found that "counties that contributed the highest inflows of Sturgis attendees saw COVID-19 cases rise by 10.7 percent following the Sturgis event relative to counties without any detected attendees. Descriptive evidence suggests some evidence of variation in local COVID-19 spread depending on the stringency of local contagion mitigation policies. We conclude that the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally generated substantial public health costs, which we calculate to reach at least $12.2 billion."

The counties outside of South Dakota that sent the most attendees to the rally were Adams County, Colorado, Jefferson County, Colorado, Weld County, Colorado, Maricopa County, Arizona, Clark County, Nevada, Anoka County, Minnesota, and Campbell County, Wisconsin and they found that the rally is associated with a 13.5 percent increase in COVID-19 cases" in those counties. They found "strong evidence that the Sturgis Rally appears to have been a superspreader event for COVID-19; we find significant case increases within the state of South Dakota as well as increases extending to counties from which relatively more residents attended the event."

The spread of the virus due to the event was large: we document large increases in cumulative cases relative to the synthetic counterfactual in the county of the event, and the cluster of CBGs in the county and adjoining the county over the entire post-event time period, with larger increases detected towards the end of the time period. Similarly, we find large increases statewide-- with increases in the South Dakota cumulative COVID-19 caseload relative to the synthetic counterfactual that were between 3.6 and 3.9 cases per 1,000 population.

We are further able to document national spread due to the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, although that spread also appears to have been successfully mitigated by states with strict infection mitigation policies. In counties with the largest relative inflow to the event, the per 1,000 case rate increased by 10.7 percent after 24 days following the onset of Sturgis Pre-Rally Events. Multiplying the percent case increases for the high, moderate-high and moderate inflow counties by each county’s respective pre-rally cumulative COVID-19 cases and aggregating, yields a total of 263,708 additional cases in these locations due to the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally. Adding the number of new cases due to the Rally in South Dakota estimated by synthetic control (3.6 per 1,000 population, scaled by the South Dakota population of approximately 858,000) brings the total number of cases to 266,796 or 19 percent of 1.4 million new cases of COVID-19 in the United States between August 2nd 2020 and September 2nd 2020.

If we conservatively assume that all of these cases were non-fatal, then these cases represent a cost of over $12.2 billion, based on the statistical cost of a COVID-19 case of $46,000 estimated by Kniesner and Sullivan (2020). This is enough to have paid each of the estimated 462,182 rally attendees $26,553.64 not to attend. This is by no means an accurate accounting of the true externality cost of the event, as it counts those who attended and were infected as part of the externality when their costs are likely internalized. However this calculation is nonetheless useful as it provides a ballpark estimate as to how large of an externality a single superspreading event can impose, and a sense of how valuable restrictions on mass gatherings can be in this context. Even if half of the new cases were attendees, the implied externality is still quite large. Finally, our descriptive evidence suggests that stricter mitigation policies in other locations may contribute to limiting externality exposure due to the behavior of non-compliant events and those who travel to them.

Yesterday, COVID-Kristi and her ideologically-inspired toxic policies infected 191 more South Dakotans with the virus, bringing the state's reported total to 15,300, or 17,295 cases per million South Dakotans. But because Noem's insane response to the pandemic has been a super-spreader on a national basis, she has been responsible for, literally, hundreds of thousands of cases across America. She's dangerous-- a true arch-villain of the pandemic-- and should be removed from office as soon as constitutionally possible.