This is a great chance to get a famous singer like Van Morrison to play!
Thousands of bikers attended rally at Lake of the Ozarks in Missouri
The 14th annual Bikefest Lake of the Ozarks started Wednesday, Sept. 16 and ran through Sunday, Sept. 20. Previous rallies drew over 100,000 to the area, NBC affiliate KSDK reported.
The event featured vending areas, more than 50 live shows, over 300 “biker-friendly” bars, restaurants and hotels, and a Harley Davidson giveaway, according to its website.
“If I was worried about getting sick I would have stayed home, but I wanted to have some fun,” one attendee told MSNBC, which reported that the 2020 event was “comparable” in size to prior events.
sigh
We’ll have to keep an eye on it. This ought to be interesting.
I’ve been looking at the numbers in New England, especially New Hampshire in the wake of the delayed Laconia Bike Week. Thus far I’ve seen no more than small blips that I can’t assign to that event with any confidence. Of course, I don’t know how many showed up for the vent, or how closely they kept to the social distancing guidelines.
Estimates are Laconia had 20-30% of the usual crowd size, many restaurants decided to close, the vast majority of vendors were banned, and masks were required. All of these things combined made it a lot less worrisome for us in NH (and apparently a lot less fun for no-mask bikers).
Most of the small uptick we’ve had is from college students and faculty/staff (last week over 50% were faculty/staff, catching it from each other via all sorts of mask and social distancing policy violations rather than students, at least based on a scathing email from UNH’s president). All four schools in the University of New Hampshire system are doing twice weekly testing of students and weekly testing of faculty/staff, so probably picking up asymptomatic cases.
Saw an update on this today.
https://a.msn.com/r/2/BB1a7VkP?m=en-us&referrerID=InAppShare
Long and informative article. The link is through MSN, so maybe not paywalled.
I hadn’t realized this (my bold):
But this year, a survey found that 60 percent of residents wanted the rally postponed. At council meetings, people lined up to argue. A nurse warned there wouldn’t be enough hospital beds if the event went forward, while a business owner said she would lose her building if it didn’t. Calling off this year’s rally, its 80th anniversary, would mean a loss of around $2 million for the city, authorities said. It had only been done during World War II.
…In the run-up to the rally, officials estimated that 250,000 people would come. The actual number, according to the South Dakota Transportation Department, was over 460,000 — down just 7 percent from 2019.
They came in the greatest numbers from South Dakota, source of an estimated 93,000 attendees, or a fifth of the total, according to calculations by the Center for New Data. Minnesota ranked second, with an estimated 31,000 people, followed by Colorado with 29,000. Many traveled hundreds of miles: 21,000 rallygoers are believed to have come from Texas, and 20,800 from California.
…“No one that I spoke to there wasn’t aware of coronavirus, and wasn’t aware that there was a risk of them being there,” Crerar said. “It was just a risk that they accepted.”
…
A “risk they accepted” on behalf of OTHER PEOPLE who had no say in the matter. 
This guy Cervantes is identified at the beginning of the article as someone who went to the rally against his girlfriend’s advice. He got very sick, spent a week in the hospital. At least at the end he acquired some wisdom.
Cervantes now looks at things differently. Watching football, he worried how many of the thousands of fans admitted to a recent Kansas City Chiefs game might become infected, even as he noticed they sat apart. He once put on a mask to humor Balcom [his girlfriend]; now he says he has to resist the urge to yell at strangers to wear them.
After weeks of missed work, his stint in the hospital and a return visit to the ER over a blood clot concern, he’s come to deeply regret his decision.
“I was naive,” he said. “I was dumb, you know? I shouldn’t have went. I did; I can’t change that, so I just got to move forward. But sitting here just the past few days, that’s all I keep thinking about. I’m like, Jesus, look at the hell I’m going through, the hell I put everybody through. It ain’t worth it. It wasn’t. It really wasn’t.”
He’s lucky he lived to regret the decision.
I have to say, I fucking hate “burned by the stove“ people. You know, people who are like “the stove can’t hurt you!“ Until they touch the stove, and then they’re like, “oh shit, everybody, the stove could hurt you! Be careful!”
Do they have data yet on how many of the rally goers have died? Or those infected secondarily (or more) from them?
Posted this on SRIOTD in the pit.
I fucking hate “burned by the stove“ people. You know, people who are like “the stove can’t hurt you!“ Until they touch the stove, and then they’re like, “oh shit, everybody, the stove could hurt you! Be careful!”
Agree. Why are these idiots given publicity. Well, probably as object lessons for the people who haven’t touched the stove yet, but if those people were capable of learning from anything other than their own experiences, they wouldn’t need this.
And for the schadenfreude !
I went to covidexitstrategy.org and took every single state in the US that had more than 800 new cases per million per day. It was weird, as they all formed this odd looking cluster. I’ll let you guess what that little red star represents.
Now, I’m not saying that there is a relationship…
Fuck that noise, of course I’m saying that there is a relationship.
I mentioned in another thread that there is a definite upswing in cases in the Black Hills… My mom had three co-workers in one day go down (she thankfully tested negative), and an ex-coworker of mine also tested positive.
In Gillette, Wyoming now there is also a major uptick, and one of our state representatives just died from it, his funeral was five days ago.
It’s our turn here in Ontario today.
Every Friday the 13th, bikers gather en masse in Port Dover, Ontario. An otherwise sleepy little lakeside town. While the town loves the attention, and the bikers drop lots of dollars while there, it’s gotten really large and overwhelming for them too.
As a small community they have had little Covid, but this could change that. The Premier, mayor, etc, have pleaded with people to stay away, and many businesses are vowing to stay closed.
But, today is the day that we shall see what actually happens.
(This anti mask/freedom crap is spreading up here in Canada too! We are also caught in a second wave of rising numbers. And here in Ontario could see another lockdown!)
So, let’s see. You’re saying that if not for the rally, that cluster would have managed to avoid the fate that had earlier befallen the entire rest of the country? I wonder what they had done up till that point to remain so pristine.
I think he’s saying that they likely would be less intense.
I’d assume the reason they were lower in infections before is that many of those states are sparsely populated.
I would assume the same thing. That and less well connected to major metropolitan areas.
Let’s put it another way - is it credible to imagine that the Sturgis rally did NOT spread the virus?
Is it credible to say that any spread was predictable prior to the event?
So, the local event did happen, but instead of 2-3,000 bikers, they only got about 2-300. And they were all pretty respectful of following the protocols for social distancing and masks.
Not the raucous day+evening long event seen in years past, instead it was short and sweet it seems.
Oh you crazy Canadians and your crazy polite Canadian bikers!
Seriously, glad it was a smallish, respectful gathering.
Updating this thread, the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally has started up again and public health officials again feel this will be a super-spreader event:
Is anyone here going?