Bikers descend on Sturgis rally with few signs of pandemic

Excellent post, and so obviously correct. Why can't we have more people in this country seeing things clearly like you are?

 

Y’all will probably be disappointed. South Dakota has a lot of stats on it’s side for weathering this well. Their median age is below the average median age for the country. They are in the top ten of states for highest percentage of non-Hispanic whites. They are average or below for most other underlying conditions like heart disease and diabetes.

 

The thing is, all this discussion here if people from the Sturgis rally will die or not, will soon be a moot point. As usual, the virus takes care of silencing the deniers.

Think of it: 250,000 people. Given the steady mortality rate, if a chunk of these catch the virus, and given the rate of obesity, alcoholism, heavy smoking leading to bronchitis, etc., that is likely to be more prevalent in the population of bikers as compared to the general population, there is no way in hell that some bikes won't die from COVID-19 contracted in Sturgis.

How will we know? From testimony. I am positive that in a few weeks, we'll start seeing Facebook posts and what not, saying "I'm so sad, my boyfriend was a biker, he went to Sturgis although I begged him not to go; he said this virus wasn't dangerous and it was all left-wing hysteria; but then he caught it there, and he just died yesterday."

Guaranteed. We *will* see this kind of testimony, inevitably, and it will indeed be very sad, because it was perfectly avoidable. Organizers, the heads of motorcycle clubs, etc., could simply have addressed the community and said, "folks, maybe it's not prudent to hold this rally this year; let's not jeopardize our brothers and sisters, we don't want to lose some of our best friends to this disease; let's stay put this year, and hopefully next year this will be over with vaccines and all, and we'll go back and have a Sturgis Rally for the ages!"

 

It's not in South Dakota that the bulk of this will play out. The overwhelming majority of the people who attended the rally were not from South Dakota. Those who predictably got contaminated during the rally will have returned to their own communities all over the country, and that's where the trouble will be.

As for people being average or below for most underlying conditions, again, regardless of the South Dakota stats for their general population, we're talking here about bikers, and if I can tell by simply crossing them on the roads and looking at pictures of their gatherings, obesity is extremely prevalent among them, and I'd think that alcoholism and heavy smoking are probably also rampant. They are also not spring chicken.

I think that more likely than not, the mortality rate among bikers who caught COVID-19 in Sturgis will be higher than that of the general population.

And even if it's just the same case-fatality rate, do remember that while the infection fatality rate is likely lower, the case-fatality rate has been a steady 3%, so for each 100 bikers who test positive, we should expect that 3 will die. If of these 250,000 bikers just 1% test positive for this disease, which is not far-fetched at all in these super-spreader kind of gatherings, we'll see about 75 dead bikers.

By the way, how are you buddy? Long time no see.

 

But it is doing that as well as spreading across the country.

Hundreds of infections in SD per day for a week now

 

Absolutely. I’m not sure why the emphasis is on SD. The majority of infections from the rally in SD would be in service industries I suppose and that is a concern. But only a very small percentage of “bikers” in attendance were from SD.

That’s probably a good rule of thumb but maybe too broad a generalization. I think the stereotypical “biker” gets most of the press coverage in photos etc. Most people would probably be surprised at the diversity at the Sturgis rally. Everything from MC’s to Christian white collars. I know a few people who go on occasion. The only person I know who went this year is a cop who used to live up there and now goes up from Georgia every year to contract security at the rally. He camps out in the sticks and obviously isn’t there to party but he certainly could be exposed. I should check on him I suppose.

I’ve toyed with the idea of running up there some year for a day or two just to experience it. I own two Harley Sportsters. One I ride for work when I don’t need a pickup in the summer and the other my wife and I ride some. We’ve taken it to Yellowstone which was a ball. Added together my wife and I may weigh 235 lbs and neither of us has ever smoked or drank. But we are certainly exceptions to the “typical“ biker.

I could be wrong, but obesity seems pretty prevalent in the general population. It would be interesting to know how much more prevalent it is among motorcycle enthusiasts.

Sounds reasonable.

Been reading instead of posting. Fascinating stuff about IFR differences between zip codes and how the hygiene hypothesis relates to T cell regulation later in life. Also all the other little things like subclinical dehydration and metropolitan living that contribute to baseline inflammation and unregulated immune responses.

I think the medical profession or government should set up think tanks to make sense of all the data and information we have. There’s too much for any one person or discipline to digest and draw conclusions from a systems based perspective. You need multi discipline baseline knowledge and time to think it all through. Specialized researchers, physicians, etc. are too busy doing their jobs to address the whole system of limitless variables. Just my opinion but it makes sense to me. Maybe something like this exists but I’m unaware of it.

Today I conducted an experiment on the effects of being showered with glyphosate and ammonia sulfate. So far everything still seems to be working the way it should. Monday I’m calling Bayer to see if they want to feature me in advertising promoting the safety of Roundup. LOL

 

Always a pleasure to read you, so I missed you. Yes, the think tank idea is great. Yes, we're too busy and can barely absorb the whole set of always-evolving info. This virus is making my head spin. I'm reaching saturation. But one thing I've been paying close attention to, is the vaccine front, my biggest hope.

Today we had the first confirmed case of re-infection in the US, following a handful of other cases abroad. That's not good. It terrifies me. On the other hand we got the best news ever, too bad it's favoring China and their allies (I doubt they'll be sending us this vaccine anytime soon) rather than our domestic attempts, but it's great news anyway: CoronaVac, the Sinovac vaccine candidate, is showing truly spectacular results in phase 3. They've tested 24,000 people already, with 0.18% of some fever as the worst side effect so far (not a single serious or life-threatening reaction), and astonishing 92.4% of seroconversion into high titers of neutralizaing antibodies after a low single dose! Looks very safe and very effective, beyond my wildest dreams. I mean, this kind of puts a wrench in the mRNA concept; why reinvent the wheel, when the simple, tried and true and proven method of inactivated virus vaccine used by Sinovac is doing so well?

I kind of doubt that the mRNA vaccines will yield this safety profile and this immunogenicity. Sure, inactivated virus vaccines are slower to produce, and before the rest of humankind benefits from it, there are 1.4 billion people in China who will obviously be given priority before they start exporting. But a vaccine with 92.4% efficacy does have the potential to put an end to the pandemic.

You may say, can we trust what the Chinese are saying about their preliminary results? Actually, yes, we can. China is very invested in getting a safe and efficacious vaccine to redeem themselves of the big PR hit they got with the "China Virus." They do not want to release a defective product that will cause huge post-marketing problems and add insult to injury. So, they are engaged in honest effort. On this, they do not have an interest in lying, because they know that a lie would be short-lived and would backfired on them if the vaccine doesn't deliver what they are promising. Second, the above data were confirmed by the very reliable, very prestigious (among Viral Immunology experts), very trustworthy Instituto Butantã in Brazil, one of the major scientific organizations in the world, quite competent and quite independent (I trust them truly and personally know some of their scientists). They are managing the Brazilian share of the CoronaVac phase 3 trial and are highly impressed.

So, it looks like we have the first very safe, very efficacious vaccine! Too bad it's in China, not here... but hey, they are showing that it can be done. I just hope this re-infection business doesn't spoil it all. Darn!

 

Yeh, there are a couple reinfections now that look legit. I haven’t seen all the details just that two different strains were isolated. Not sure how long between infections, do you know? And if the strains are both already identified and prevalent?

It’s my understanding the known strains aren’t significantly different enough to be unrecognizable by the adaptive immune system. I heard they didn’t antibody test between the infections so that leaves a bit of speculation as to whether this is an antibody failure as well as a T cell failure. I guess since I don’t know the timing of infections or if antibodies formed I shouldn’t hypothesize.

If the second infection was caused by a strain previously unknown and mutated enough to cause antigenic drift I’d be concerned about vaccines as well. If not, until we have more information I lean towards this being a rare occurrence caused by a dysfunction of the individual’s immune system.

As far as China, we’ve been consuming about every product known to man from them for years, I don’t know why we would reject their vaccine. So it’s a “killed” not attenuated vaccine from China? Frankly I’m cool with either, just curious and don’t want to look it up.

 

lol!

Sadly for this claim, that is a very low population state, and that area was as a even lower population area!

The "good ranking" goes to heck when there are added a quarter to half a million partying bikers running around the state, of FEW are counted in that hospital beds in that state!

Fortunately, quite a few leave to swell the rates of the sick and dying in OTHER states, but more than a few hang around too.

It might be good to see what you are counting when you try to make things look rosy!

 

People who choose to be tested are those that have shown symptoms. SD is showing a rapid rise in cases. Hence a rapid rise in those showing symptoms. Younger people tend to travel and socialize more. Hence those younger people in your post are going to be the carriers showing symptoms infecting others in state and across state lines

 

Wow! What an idea!

It would could great to have some Central Authority to get statistics, have tracking of trends and pending problems, get some top specialists to have reports, share everyone's information, all these ways to improve problems, save lives, so much more!

May a cental authority, lets call him or her "The President", who have lieutenants to set up groups like, maybe "The Center for Disease Control" (the "CDC" for short!), and number of other agencies who keep up with good funding and good information, and "The President" could make sure it all goes smoothly!

But, I guess its better to have "The President" sabotaging the top experts while constantly claiming its a hoax, while his minions say how everyone just next to get sick real quick so the "Herd Immunity" will let us know who is going to survive!

In other words, Never Mind!

 

And yet there has been an explosion of infection in the population of SD. We'll see from cell phone data how it spread outside of SD

 

The large percentage of "bikers" from outside SD were the ones who brought in the virus into SD and those not previously infected will be taking it out of SD

 

Several months between two infections. In the Hong Kong case, two different strains, one prevalent there, the first one, and the other prevalent in Europe. What makes it a bit less scary is that there was probably good cell immunity as the gentleman had a symptomatic first case but a brief and asymptomatic second one. Still, it's scary. I saw that we had the first confirmed USA re-infection but I didn't look at details for that one.

It's not that we'd reject their vaccine. It's that it is slower to produce and obviously China will want to first vaccinate its own population of 1.4 billion people then their partners such as Brazil (220 million people) next probably India and South Africa, so it will be quite a while until there is enough CoronaVac to get to us. More than one year, I'd think. They may very well end up being the one with the best immunogenicity. 92.4% is quite impressive. Yes, inactivated (killed) virus.

 

I’m sorry facts upset you. Facts aren’t rosey, they are just facts.

 

It’s important to remember cases in SD were rising a week before Sturgis. Of course there will be spread fro the rally. I don’t think attending was prudent. But I’m going to stick with facts and not blame increase in cases that began a week before the rally on the rally.

 

Yes, an explosion that was well underway before the rally. Check out some graphs of daily cases on Worldometer. Every state experiences an approximately eight week surge in cases at some point whether they have a bike rally or not. It’s how coronaviruses work through populations.

 

No. Cases were rising a week before the rally. Stick to the facts. Yes, spread will increase because of the rally. That’s also a fact.

 

The start of the rapid rise was around 18th August (look at the gradient of the 7 day average)

 

The US case was mild first infection and more severe second infection I believe. I’ll try and read up on it this morning. That’s troubling as would signal a failure of adaptive immune system.

What is the logistics of purchasing or begging the technology from China? Would it take 15 years to get it through FDA even after trials in China? Maybe we should just give them a dose of their own medicine and “steal” their intellectual property. LOL

 

Be happy that herd immunity grows daily. The herd, all of us, will benefit in the long run.

 

I’ve looked. It’s similar to the curves of every other eight week spike of every other state. It began before Sturgis. Did Sturgis add some? Undoubtedly. Would a surge have continued to spike without Sturgis? Undoubtedly. It has everywhere else.

 

Yes, inevitably the herd immunity grows.

 

Wow. I didn't read about the first US case, in part because I didn't feel like getting upset when I saw the headline.

Haha, yes, we should steal their vaccine! Actually their trials were not done in China because they needed sites with rapid spread of the virus, so they tested it n Brazil. Sinopharma is testing theirs in the UAE, a weird choice as they don't have a huge outbreak there; puzzling. CanSino is testing theirs in South Africa, Brazil, and the UK.

 

Are you aware that NO aggressive and highly contagious pandemic in the history of mankind has ever been controlled with natural infection-driven herd immunity? None?
Vaccines will be needed to achieve herd immunity.