I do see the data is there. It only shows two dates, as I said, based on your slider position… The left date of the slider vs. the right date. One would have to do some digging to look for correlation, the graph itself isn’t going to do it for you. Not only that, the metric is a bit messed up anyway… A country with independent regions that control their own lockdown procedures is ranked by the most strict of the regions.
I saw that, but that’s just the stringency index, right? SayTwo is claiming that “no correlation has been shown between stringency and infection rate”. Which seems ridiculous, but that data is going to take some major crunching to show whether or not that is the case.
I haven’t really played with that particular site. I’m sure you’re right. I’ll look for those things I read earlier, as soon as I get some time. There have been at least a couple stories in the last week, and I think one of them might even have been from the BBC, that show dates that certain measures were put in place, superimposed over case counts. I want to say that France might have been one of the examples they highlighted. I’ll get back to you soon, I hope.
Exactly. It looks like the US is ‘very strict’ but some states never locked down. Many started reopening in April. Most restrictions that have been replaced after reopening are simply closing bars and wearing masks. Unless I’m looking at that incorrectly.
If you look at the original stringency paper, which I posted in the other big thread, you’ll see that they graph actions versus infection rates by country. Often they come as a reaction to a jump in infection, which is why just a one to one static comparison doesn’t work well.
Meanwhile, back to the topic of the thread, I read through about half the paper and was interested in the methodology, which tracked phones and was pretty compelling. One thing I would note, about 92% of attendees came from outside the state.
I was pleased to see that they used data from SafeGraph, who does really nice work in that space (for places they use polygons instead of centroids, just as an example, which allows for far more accuracy in many areas). They also have put together extremely clean extracts of a large portion of Census data and made them freely available, without users having to fight through the painful variable lists from the census bureau (do not click this unless you want to load a ginormous html table) to make API calls.
The other side of that coin is that 1 out of 20 South Dakotans appear to have attended Sturgis at some point. Ouch.
Thanks for that link! With American FactFinder shutting down, the new census data interface is a giant rolling ball of crap,
Oof indeed.
For many of my projects, I live and breath Census data, so if you ever have questions, reach out.
I used to use the Python CensusData library if in Python, or the census bureau’s own Restful interface for quick and dirty pulls if the need was simple.
These days, I think you’ll find this pretty useful (it’s the clean extracted census data I mentioned above):
The Sturgis motorcycle rally in South Dakota last month was a coronavirus “superpreading event” that cost public health agencies $12.2 billion, according to a new study by the IZA Institute of Labor Economics.
…
Based on the increase in case count, the German research group estimates that cases connected to the rally resulted in $12 billion in public health costs, not including the cost of any deaths that may have stemmed from a case there. The $12.2 billion cost is based on another estimation that $46,000 is spent per positive COVID-19 case. Researchers concluded that more than 266,000 cases were tied to the event.
The mayor & city council of Sturgis should be arrested for public endangerment. The city should be sued for that $12B.
Another quote…
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.
I suspect this could have been negotiated down to $100 and case of beer in most cases.
I hate myself just a little for how funny I found that.
My understanding is that they simply could not stop it, and knowing the mob was coming, provided portapotties and first aid stations because to not do that would be to just make it worse. This needed coordinated state and national support.
I don’t buy that. Here’s the first random image I found from this year’s Sturgis.
For starters, they could have put the word out a month (or even a week) ago saying it would be cancelled. That, in and of itself, would have stopped a lot of people from just showing up anyway. I’d even say it may have stopped the majority of them.
Next, look at the picture. All those vendors with tents/shops set up on the sidewalk. They very likely required some type of permit to do that (especially the one’s selling alcohol in a public area). They city could have refused to issue permits. Sure, some will set up anyway, but many won’t want to risk the fines.
They city could have also, with plenty of notice ahead of time, warned all the businesses in the area that city officials will be strictly enforcing all occupancy codes (be it the normal ones set by the FD or the reduced ones set by local health officials). People violating that will be subject to fines and non-renewal of licenses next year.
They could have banned, and enforced, gatherings over X amount of people in public areas (like concerts). They could have refused permits for concerts.
The list goes on and on of ways the city could have kept most people out and dealt with the people that showed up anyway. And those are just ideas off the top of my head. Some might work, some might not. But, in any case, the city didn’t even try.
I get it, they were in a tough position, but so is every other major city with major events. We’ve all essentially cancelled summer this year and cities such as Sturgis, like people that refuse to wear masks, are just making this all take so much longer than it needs to. Cities refusing to host these types of events are like stores that refuse to let you in without a mask. The more places that do it, the fewer the opportunities people that want to say FU to the system actually have and the sooner we’ll get past this. Remember, the virus only cares if you do or don’t protect yourself, it doesn’t care why you make that choice.
They encouraged it.
Yeah, put out roadblocks, order all bars & restaurants, and related biker business closed. No permits for street sellers, close them all.
Ask the Gov to put tanks on the road.
The Town wanted the $$$, that is all there is to it.
IIRC, the rally was held on state land and the governor was all for it. She should be made to pay. Personally. Plus the organizers.
She’s a Trump supporter, by the way. And they are also still doing their state fair.
I imagine she’s gonna wanna see that itemized bill.
Sturgis has a population under 8000. This is not a political entity capable of swift, decisive action. How many full time employees could they possibly have? A couple dozen? Mayor is almost certainly a part time job. This is a state level failure.
The blame should and can be on both the mayor and the governor. They mayor can have his office deny applications for anything related to the rally. No closed streets, no outdoor vendor permits, no temporary liquor or bartender’s licenses for that week etc. They mayor then can call the governor and together their offices can come up with a plan. Whether it’s to coordinate with city police, county sheriff’s deputies and state troopers to make sure it stays shut down or even to call in the national guard.
The problem is that shutting down the rally over the virus would be political suicide. I’m willing to bet that if thousands of people planned to show up to protest something, they would have at least tried to stop it.
Let’s be honest. They could have stopped this, or at least put a significant dent in attendance. They chose not to even try.
This.
The rally isn’t contained in Sturgis. If it were, Sturgis would have a temporary population density double that of Guttenberg, NJ, the most densely populated city in the US. Not only that, Guttenberg looks like this, Sturgis doesn’t, so those people don’t actually hang out in the city very often and could easily still have the majority of the festivities without city approval. Most of the action takes place in the campgrounds, which are outside of the city’s jurisdiction.
The city isn’t completely blameless, as they caved when they realized that the governor was not going to back them up, but this one falls mostly on her shoulders. Remember, she’s the one who threatened to sue the reservations who had put up checkpoints under their own jurisdiction, which they did as an attempt to halt the virus spread.
I just don’t expect much from the government of such a tiny town. This is closer to the board of an HOA than a city; you can’t expect a competent response, any more than their local volunteer fire department could handle a massive firefight. And it was very clear the state government was not going to provide support or even protection if they cancelled.
Also, what does the part time mayor or one-night-a-month council member of a Town of 8000 care about political suicide? This isn’t a stepping stone to the senate