Death on Two Wheels, It's Sturgis Again

 


The Covid pandemic was responsible for last year's Sturgis motorcycle rally slump as just 460,000 bikers showed up. This year has seen a rebound in the 700,000 range.

Christina Steele, a spokesperson for the city, summed it up this way: “The people visiting have said they come from states that have been in lockdown for so long and they just want to have a normal summer vacation without the worries of last year.  People here don’t want to talk about covid. They want to have a good time.”

Again this year there'll be no mask mandate. Other than a lot more attendees there's one big difference this year, the highly transmissible Delta variant.

Several attendees interviewed by reporters said they had no plans to be vaccinated. One man who spoke to CNN was coughing as he tried to explain why he wouldn’t get inoculated, while another unvaccinated attendee said he was not too worried about contracting the virus: “If it happens, it happens.”

The Sturgis rally is the latest large outdoor event to take place during the fourth wave of the pandemic. Weeks after the Milwaukee Bucks won their first NBA championship in 50 years, the Wisconsin Department of Health Services identified almost 500 people who contracted covid-19 after they celebrated with a sea of thousands of mostly maskless fans outside the arena.

Rod Woodruff said that many out-of-town visitors have thanked Noem and Sturgis for giving them a place to go that lacks many of the coronavirus restrictions that are in place in other cities. Woodruff, 75, is celebrating his 40th year as president of the Sturgis Buffalo Chip, a campground that hosts a concert series during the rally that serves as “a tribute to true American freedom.” He told The Post that events like the motorcycle rally and Lollapalooza were examples of people rejecting politicians and health officials who have tried to curb the surge in cases in recent weeks.

Last year's rally resulted in hundreds of infections. What is unknown is how the virus spread from bikers to others once they returned home.

Comments

  1. TrailblazerAugust 8, 2021 at 4:05 PM

    Until the USA can fix stupid, we should keep our border closed.
    Much the same with Alberta.

    TB

    ReplyDelete
  2. The Disaffected LibAugust 8, 2021 at 4:41 PM

    I would think the government owes us an explanation why it opened the border when the Delta variant is breaking out across so much of the US.

    ReplyDelete

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