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COVID-19 illnesses after half million people attend Sturgis rally: almost none

Can we please put aside our fear? Almost two weeks after about a half a million people attended the Sturgis motorcyle rally in South Dakota (an event that spanned ten days), only three hospitalizations from COVID-19 have been linked to this event, and two of those have already recovered.

I can only find confirmation of three hospitalizations at this point in the reporting. Two of the patients have confirmed discharges indicating they will fully recover. Since they had symptoms and developed them within fourteen days of the rally, contracting the virus during their travels or attendance seems likely. By way of contrast, there were four fatal crashes at the Sturgis event that killed five people.

Even using the largest number of positive tests and granting they all 222 resulted from rally attendance, 0.048% of attendees and contacts tested positive for COVID-19. Some states have done contact-tracing on people who tested positive post-rally and included those individuals in their reporting.

You won’t see this reported in the media nationally. It is too much good news. If almost half a million people can gather for an event that spans 10 days with this outcome, it puts their COVID-19 panic porn to rest.

If you saw any videos from this rally, you saw that most people were not social distancing, were not wearing masks, and were having a darn good time.

COVID-19 is not dangerous. You won’t get it easily, or if you do, you are likely not to even know. And if you do get sick, you will almost certainly recover, like the flu. The only people who should be concerned about the virus are those with other serious illnesses who likely should not attend such large events anyway.

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On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 
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25 comments

  • Edward

    most people were not social distancing, were not wearing masks, and were having a darn good time.

    Arrest those people! They obviously are pursuing happiness during the Great Oppression. Such dangerous outlaws. Or is it scofflaws?

    Actually, masks and social distancing aren’t even laws, they are merely applied tyranny.

    The low infection rate may be related to the lack of masks. Perhaps not breathing contaminated air for hours on end is even better for preventing illness than hand washing.

  • wayne

    tangentially related….
    (let’s go for a drive)

    Interstate 90; Rapid City, SD to Mount Rushmore
    The Highywayman 2012
    https://youtu.be/L5dTpXtA7H0

  • Cotour

    Covid is cycling through the population, that’s what such things do, its the nature of things.

    And this is why the argument for mail in voting being so desperately pushed by the Democrats is fraudulent because in two months from tomorrow the virus will have cycled even more thoroughly through the majority of the population.

  • Phill O

    Joe must be hidden! Enough of the truth!

  • Cotour

    Its all over if Joe gets Covid.

    Think about it, and that is why Joe is essentially hiding from most everyone. And Trump is all over the place. Trump buries Biden and Harris, a joke ticket. Just a symbolic offering by the democrats, not a serious set of candidates.

    I think an interesting question for Joe might be: “Are you considering taking Hydroxychloroquine as a prophylactic for Covid while on the campaign trail?”.

    He is probably not allowed to take it due to the condition of his health?

  • sippin_bourbon

    Cotour,

    Are you implying that Biden loses if he gets Covid?

    I was assuming that on NOV1 they are going to announce he has it, as a last minute push to say “its Trumps Fault”. And if he wins, he will die from Covid by the 15th. ergo, President Harris.

    (Just my own cynical prophesy based on nothing but the voices in my head. Let me know what they tell you.)

  • Cotour

    My point was that if Biden were to contract Covid and was unable to prosecute his campaign that it would all just be over so he is by necessity hyper cautious.

    But your scenario does also make sense in a Democrat leadership, slip Biden the Covid, S.O.M. kind of way.

    Its all insane at this point so anything is possible. Biden and Harris have no possible chance of successfully challenging Trump for the presidency, they are just place holders for 2024. ZERO chance at this point. And it can only get worse for them.

    Trump has forced them all to show what they and it is all about. They can no longer hide from the truth through their own fraudulent verbiage and the Leftist / Globalist controlled media covering for them. The lights are on and the cock roaches have no place to hide.

  • F16 Guy

    1. I think Ol’ Joe just “might” get the WUHAN FLU right before the debates !! Solves a HUUGE problem for him

    2. If you can stand in line waiting to get into Walmart, why can’t you stand in line to vote? Asking for a friend.

    The WUHAN FLU scare will be over the day after the elections……

    The true story of this debacle is a Pulitzer Prize in the making.

  • Cotour

    1. A presidential candidate who is unable or is not willing to debate his or her opponent is called a looser and can not be elected to anything.

    2. There will be no reason that there can not be relatively normal voting this November. None what so ever, tell your friend.

    And a Pulitzer only if the “True” story is written only by an approved Liberal / Leftist. I think the creator, and I mean creator, of the 1619 Project received a Pulitzer if I remember correctly, and Obama also received a Nobel Peace Prize. Enough said about prizes awarded.

  • Alex Andrite

    Regarding the deaths and accidents:
    It is well known that many of the motorcycle accidents and deaths during the Sturgis rally, as well as so many others, are due to extreme dehydration and heat stroke where the riders brain goes into a “fog” due to lack of water and drifts off. Many riders do not dress for the ride, choosing to be “cool” leaving themselves exposed to the wind and heat, and dehydration. Often and especially after hard partying nights before.

    “Hydrate or Die!”. Is the saying.

    Alex, ’99 Moto Guzzi rider on cross country and to many rallies.

    ciao

  • Rick

    Biden doesn’t have to make an attempt at campaigning, as long as enough states go with mail in voting.
    If it was just NY and CA, it wouldn’t be bad, but how many states did Trump win, that are now controlled by Democrats?

  • Questioner

    In only about 6% of the deceased who tested positive in the US, Covid-19 was actually the actual cause of death in the end. To date, only about 11,000 people have died from the disease in the United States. That is not much. Many flu outbreaks result in significantly more deaths. In addition, the average age at death of the Covid-19 dead corresponds almost exactly to the average lifespan. This means that the population and the vitality of the general population are in no way negatively influenced by the disease at all.

    Why is the government trying to put the real, hard facts, the truth, aside? Well, because it’s about political control and power and its expansion.

  • mkent

    To date, only about 11,000 people have died from the disease in the United States. That is not much. Many flu outbreaks result in significantly more deaths.

    This is just flat-out false. To date there have been 193,000 Americans that have died from COVID-19. That is many, many times the number that have died from the worst seasonal flu outbreak in the United Stages (15,560, using the same methods as COVID-19 cases are counted).

    It is the second-worst epidemic in American history — second to only the 1918 Spanish flu outbreak.

  • Edward

    mkent,
    You wrote: “To date there have been 193,000 Americans that have died from COVID-19.

    This is just flat-out false. The CDC number is lower than this, and the CDC number includes those who died with — not just from — Wuhan virus, as well as people who died and were suspected of having the Wuhan virus, and people who were merely assumed to have the Wuhan virus. These last three categories are completely different than the number of people who died from Wuhan flu. Not only did they not die from the Wuhan flu, people in the last two categories may not have even been infected with the virus.

    You are a classic example of why it is bad to corrupt data. People believe the corrupted data, not realizing that it does not support their conclusions.

  • mkent

    This is just flat-out false. The CDC number is lower than this…

    Not much lower. The various dashboards differ by about a percent or two based on the timing of when numbers reported by the states get accumulated. The CDC number is only slightly lower at 189,000.

    and the CDC number includes those who died with — not just from — Wuhan virus, as well as people who died and were suspected of having the Wuhan virus, and people who were merely assumed to have the Wuhan virus.

    No, it doesn’t. It includes decedents whose cause of death on their death certificates was COVID-19. Just because they also had high blood pressure, diabetes, or obesity doesn’t mean they didn’t die of COVID-19. The 6% figure is a lie spread by people who don’t know how to read death certificates.

  • Edward

    mkent,
    So you are saying that the CDC is lying? The 6% figure comes from the CDC, plus you deny the CDC’s figures for deaths. I guess they don’t know what they are talking about, but Dr. mkent does! I defer to your vastly superior knowledge, your bogus numbers derived from corrupted data, your ability to read data and interpret it correctly including removing the corruption, and your extensive medical experience over the amateurs in the actual medical field, who brought us the corrupted data in the first place, the data that you rely upon to draw your conclusions.

    On the other hand, a reality check shows that the 6% figure is the low end of the possibilities for the true number. Perhaps 6% of the remaining 94% died of Wuhan rather than just dying with, and there may even have been some suspected and assumed deaths that were from rather than with or without Wuhan. This is the problem with corrupted data. It is so difficult to pull reliable data from the corruption. All that we do know is that the true numbers are less than the inflated numbers that the press have been giving us for the past seven or eight months and certainly less than the numbers that the CDC has presented. Especially given the lucrative financial incentives to inflate the reported deaths at various medical facilities.

    So, mkent, as the resident expert on reading death certificates, how many have Wuhan listed when it is only suspected or assumed rather than actually tested? And of the others, how many died of Wuhan flu rather than with it or with the virus?

  • mkent

    So you are saying that the CDC is lying? The 6% figure comes from the CDC…

    The CDC reported that only 6% of the fatal victims of COVID-19 had *only* COVID-19 on their death certificates. It did not say that only those people died of COVID-19. That’s a misinterpretation by some and an intentional lie by others.

    Death certificates list the proximate cause of death first and the underlying cause of death second. COVID-19, being a respiratory illness, usually causes pneumonia in serious patients. It is usually this or another secondary infection that kills the patient. In such cases, the pneumonia would be listed first on the death certificate and COVID-19 would be listed second. Death was caused by the pneumonia which was caused by COVID-19.

    It is not all that different than the Boeing OFT flight anomaly in which the proximate cause of the anomaly was the Mission Elapsed Timer misread while the underlying cause was a software testing methodology failure. The software testing failure resulted in the MET misread which caused the anomaly.

    Death certificates often go further and list chronic medical conditions below the proximate and true cause of death, so you’ll often see conditions like high blood pressure and diabetes at the bottom of the list. They do that to provide the data to the analysts who, like in the case of COVID-19, looked at the data and noticed that a lot of COVID-19 fatalities occurred with people with those two conditions. That, in turn, allowed the medical community to identify at-risk groups and also those not at high risk. It also helped lead to a hypothesis as to *how* COVID-19 kills people (the bradykinin hypothesis), which may in turn suggest treatments to prevent that.

    But chronic conditions are chronic, not acute. People can and do live for decades with those underlying conditions. To believe that only people who have no other causes of death on their death certificates died of COVID-19 is to believe that it is *not possible* for people with diabetes or hypertension to die of COVID-19, since their death certificates will never list only COVID-19.

    plus you deny the CDC’s figures for deaths.

    For someone who believes only 11,000 Americans died of COVID-19 to claim that someone quoting a 193,000 figure from a different dashboard instead of the CDC’s 188,000 figure is “denying the CDC’s figures” is rich. My figure and the CDC’s are essentially the same as far as this conversation goes.

  • Andrew_W

    Just in case the blindingly obvious still isn’t obvious to some:
    That CDC 6% COVID Death Rate, Explained
    Dr. Zubin Damania
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsVhY6QAzrU
    [8:52]

  • Questioner

    I have learned: The actual cause of death in relation to Covid-19 can only be determined in individual cases through an autopsy. However, this does not happen by default, at least not in Germany. Not even in the US, right? However, in autopsies carried out on “corona deads” in a hospital in Hamburg for example, Covid-19 was never found to be the actual cause of death.

    Let’s look at the total mortality rate (all deaths per day). This is the safest way to test how deadly Covid-19 really is. At least for Germany (and also for other European countries) we know for sure that the number of corona deaths, even if you add up all the deaths that tested positive for Covid-19, is negligible compared to all total deaths. In Germany there is no so-called excess mortality due to Covid-19 (compared to previous years), which could be seen in the graphics!

    The fact that Covid-19 is not a dangerous disease is also evidenced by the very high average age of the deceased (which is slightly above normal life expectancy) to which Covid-19 is assigned. This also applies if all or most of the deceased who tested positive for Covid-19 actually died from this disease, which is by no means the case. Covid-19 can be fatal to a person who for any reason has reached the end of their lifespan. But this also applies to any common flu or other “additional” illness (the straw that broke the camel’s back). And that “Covid-19 people” would have died on average at the same age from any other “additional” illness if Covid-19 did not exist is proven irrefutable by the fact that the Covid-19 deaths are roughly of the same age as average life expectancy. That closes the case. Covid-19 “pandemic” = false alarm.

  • Rose

    “It’s not the fall that kills you; it’s the sudden stop at the end.”

    Likewise, COVID-19 should never be the reported Immediate Cause of Death, but rather respiratory arrest, cardiac arrest, etc.

    The 6% of death certificates which list only COVID-19 are incomplete, presumably because the COVID-19 positive victim died unobserved by medical personnel and it was not deemed worthwhile to conduct an autopsy to determine which specific immediate cause was responsible.

    Questioner> “In only about 6% of the deceased who tested positive in the US, Covid-19 was actually the actual cause of death in the end.”

    In 0% of fatalities resulting from people falling from an airplane without a parachute was falling the actual cause of death.

  • Edward

    mkent,
    Having multiple co-morbidities on a death certificate may be nice for analysis, but it has still been used in such a way as to corrupt the data that should tell us how many people died of Wuhan flu rather than died with the Wuhan virus. Your original point was that all death certificates with Wuhan listed on them is OK to list as a Wuhan flu death. Plus add in the extras with which the press routinely pads their reports, further corrupting data that people use as they discuss this cluster bleep.

    It is not all that different than the Boeing OFT flight anomaly in which the proximate cause of the anomaly was the Mission Elapsed Timer misread while the underlying cause was a software testing methodology failure.

    Actually, testing did not cause the failure. The root cause was something else, something that the testing did not catch — perhaps because the test setup was erroneous. At best, your example is analogous of a misdiagnosis.

    You failed to answer my questions and clear up the corrupted data into a usable dataset. Instead, you misdirected the conversation hoping that we wouldn’t notice.

    For someone who believes only 11,000 Americans died of COVID-19 …

    You really should read my comments before replying to them.

    My figure and the CDC’s are essentially the same as far as this conversation goes.

    Which just shows that you are willing to accept corrupted data as factual. Your arguments suffer greatly for this reason. To you, emotion is more important than data, reality, or being factually correct.

  • Edward

    mkent,
    My figure and the CDC’s are essentially the same as far as this conversation goes.

    You’re missing the point. Even the CDC’s figure is inflated. Everyone knows this, because they accept as data deaths that are just suspected or even merely assumed in addition to deaths that occurred with the Wuhan virus rather than from Wuhan flu. Thus, deaths that occurred for reasons other than Wuhan flu have been counted as having been due to this flu. This year, regular flus have killed fewer than in most years, so regular flu deaths most likely are reported as Wuhan deaths, contributing to the data corruption.

    The Wuhan flu has killed fewer people than has been reported, even by the CDC. What is in question is whether the actual number is close to 9,000 or twenty times that many. That is a huge range for making policy decisions and for keeping us locked down, keeping our businesses shut down, smacking down anyone who doesn’t comply (except favored persons, such as Nancy Pelosi), and generally oppressing the entire nation.

    Meanwhile, half a million people got together in a huge crowd, and Great Oppression advocates are unable to find enough infections to match the expected number, even had everyone cowered in their houses instead. The number of cases and deaths do not meet expectations, either. This empirical evidence suggests that outdoor crowds are preferred over indoor lockdowns. New York’s early experience showed that lockdowns resulted in as many deaths from those at home as those who were out and about as essential workers, a low fraction of the population, around 3/8 nationwide. The evidence is showing us that lockdowns are counterproductive.

    Having corrupted data is why we have such arguments. Some people argue using the corrupted data, but others acknowledge that the data is corrupted upward, giving us a false impression of what is really happening.

    Considering the U.S. as homogeneous is also an error, because it misses that fact that liberty states have fared far better than the lockdown states, but the lockdown hypothesis tells us that the liberty states should have had wuhan flu sweep through them rapidly and that the Sturgis motorcyle rally should have resulted in a shocking number of infections, cases, and deaths.

  • Edward

    mkent,
    You wrote: “For someone who believes only 11,000 Americans died of COVID-19 …

    Using the high number for argument and for decision making is as bad as using the low number.

    We can be sure that the low number is too low and we know that the high number is too high, especially the number reported by the press every day. Where the correct number lies, somewhere in that factor of 20 difference, is unknown, and this comes from data that is supposed to be counting deaths, cases, and infections accurately. Unfortunately, the methods used to determine these numbers have been compromised by politics and financial shenanigans.

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