Sturgis 2020 Yay or Nay?

1988RedT2 said:

In reply to bobzilla :

But didn't you see the scary red color in the graphic!?  Ermagerd!  Run!

Lock. It. Down. Now.

No sky falling, just a fairly apparent effect.

The reason why the cases per 100k is useful is that is controls for population.  Yes small populations will have small numbers, but the important point to note is that these areas has a rather obvious change or delta (even though the small population means small actual numbers)

Here is a historical look, that shows it a bit more clearly (probably should have put this up first).  It's probably not necessary to note when the rally was, I suspect you can guess from looking below (Aug 7 - 18), 

This is for the county that Sturgis is in:

(I figured out how to resize these easily to make them a bit less obnoxious)

Here is the state:

Here is Illinois (closest large state), for comparison:

Which "Dead" horse is being beaten here?

Predicting that a large gathering would result in a noticeable increase....

Then presenting the evidence of that increase, is IRRELEVANT?!?

So, where is this "horse" you speak of?

In reply to aircooled :

even that rate, for the whole state equates to ~240 total cases. 

I wonder how big the hospital is in Mead County? Throw in a few from motorcycle crashes and bison attacks, it may not take that much to fill it up. 

Small town hospitals are going broke right and left. 

bobzilla said:

In reply to aircooled :

even that rate, for the whole state equates to ~240 total cases. 

Yes, I fully understand that. 

Can we admit there was a pretty obvious change / result?  That is the point.

If you want a "why is this important" then (as stated previously before these results) this is an very good experiment (but not well documented) for spread. Very useful information if someone wants to have a similar type of gathering in a more populated area. This BTW is just evidence of the effect on the local / close population, no way to see the effect of these people going back home (I am sure some are local of course).  The small population vs the size of the gathering just makes it easier to see.  The low population density of the area will also tend to reduce the local effect (spread).

I will also say, the deaths that might result from this (many / most of which could be spread across multiple states and VERY hard to quantify) are likely very small because we are much better at treating this to prevent death. 

 

At least 260 coronavirus cases in 12 states are associated with South Dakota motorcycle rally 

From CNN Health’s Amanda Watts

There have been at least 260 Covid-19 cases associated with people who attended the motorcycle rally in Sturgis, South Dakota, in early August.

CNN surveyed state health departments across the United States and has tallied cases in at least 12 states:

• Colorado: 25 cases 
• Michigan: 11 cases
• Minnesota: 46 cases 
• Montana: 7 cases 
• Nebraska: 7 cases
• New Hampshire: 8 cases
• New Jersey: 3 cases 
• North Dakota: 30 cases
• South Dakota: 105 cases
• Washington: 3 cases 
• Wisconsin: 2 cases 
• Wyoming: 13 cases 
• TOTAL: 260 cases  

Some context: The rally ran from Aug. 7 through Aug. 10, with an estimated 460,000 attendee vehicles, the South Dakota Department of Transportation said.

I suspect that 260 count is a lot smaller than the actual cases that came out of Sturgis when you figure nearly half the people getting C19 are asymptomatic and a lot of people just tough it out without seeing a doctor or getting tested.

I saw a stat that surprised me about Sturgis......there were people there from 61% of all the counties in the United States. I had never thought about it before, but I did find that percentage higher than I would have guesstimated.That does illustrate how the virus can spread so readily from a single event.

jwagner (Forum Supporter) said:

I suspect that 260 count is a lot smaller than the actual cases that came out of Sturgis when you figure nearly half the people getting C19 are asymptomatic and a lot of people just tough it out without seeing a doctor or getting tested.

For sure it is smaller than the actual number.  On top of the issues you mentioned, contact tracing is probably a nightmare as well.

I appreciate the irony of jumping into COVID threads to repeatedly complain about beating a dead horse.

In reply to Steve_Jones :

People trying to call this a "dead horse" are just trying to live in denial. Cut it out.

The true number is far higher, because few of these guys would ever admit to feeling sick- the classic "John Wayne" types we see in hospitals, who will claim they have no pain during heart attacks. Lotta big man E36 M3 even for painful events. Tracking secondhand exposure at this point is impossible.

The hospitals near Sturgis are in overflow and our travelling nurses still have contracts that are active up there for week long stints. Methodist hospital in Omaha was in overflow too last week and was transferring them out through Lincoln and Council Bluffs.

Thank you all.

If I were self moderating this thread, I would lock it down now because of where it is going, I am happy to hear that  that most people here would have had the common sense to stay away from the event. 

Pete

DeadSkunk (Warren) said:

I saw a stat that surprised me about Sturgis......there were people there from 61% of all the counties in the United States. I had never thought about it before, but I did find that percentage higher than I would have guesstimated.That does illustrate how the virus can spread so readily from a single event.

That's actually a pretty impressive number, I would not have guessed. I wonder what other events have a similar or larger reach? Not from a "let's design an event to spread a virus as far as possible" angle, I'm just wondering what other events pull from such a large percentage of the country. It would almost have to be one based around transportation, where the trip (real or simulated) is part of the purpose. 

Keith Tanner said:

DeadSkunk (Warren) said:

I saw a stat that surprised me about Sturgis......there were people there from 61% of all the counties in the United States. I had never thought about it before, but I did find that percentage higher than I would have guesstimated.That does illustrate how the virus can spread so readily from a single event.

That's actually a pretty impressive number, I would not have guessed. I wonder what other events have a similar or larger reach? Not from a "let's design an event to spread a virus as far as possible" angle, I'm just wondering what other events pull from such a large percentage of the country. It would almost have to be an event based around transportation.

Madris Gras? Boston Marathon? Any given day at Disney?

In reply to mtn (Forum Supporter) :

Oshkosh. 

Probably the Indy as well. Maybe the Masters? How would you figure it out?

And I just looked it up, and found that it was that people traveled through 61% of the counties in the US, which is maybe slightly less impressive. 

Ok, I need sone help here. Since all the other avenues have been kilt off.... I came across this: 

I followed it back from the link on the bottom to the wonder.cdc. I'm trying to verify the veracity of this data. I spent an hour on my phone last night but that site has soooooo many search options. Can anyone here who has free time and the aptitude find this chart? 
 

I suspect it's fake as berkeley but if it's not I want the real link to verify it for myself. This ties back to my question on this from the very beginning.... where are we as a whole and how many excessive deaths over our normal are we seeing. 
 

I would never ask this on any other site but here because A.) you people Rick and 2.) most here just want facts and aren't trying to fit an agenda most times. 

In reply to bobzilla :

I’ll have to see if I can download some raw numbers from the cdc and compile them better.  So far, all I can find is weekly numbers, and in a format that is hard to download.  I’m sure the data is up there, it’s just that every government agency posts stuff in a different place/way, and I’m mostly used to Medicare numbers.

Edit:  Here’s where I am seeing the weekly numbers.  I’m sure the data is in a .csv or .xls file, I just haven’t found it yet.

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm

In reply to eastsideTim :

Thank you. I am not bringing in extra issues this thing may/has caused long term, just how many total deaths have we experienced in the US compared to the "normal" year. 

In reply to eastsideTim :

One other thing to note, Covid related deaths are going to be at least the #3 cause of death in the US for 2020.  It's there now with not even 12 months of data.  It's unlikely to catch Cancer or Heart problems, though.  But that source of death is quite new.

I found CDC data for 2019 and 2020 on this site, downloaded the .csv and did a few quick calculations:

https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Weekly-Counts-of-Deaths-by-State-and-Select-Causes/muzy-jte6

The 2019 numbers come pretty close to the spreadsheet above, but the 2020 are way off.

I didn't try to normalize for the population size like in the spreadsheet above, and that will make the numbers a bit less severe if the the population change numbers are to be trusted, but the weekly average is way off, so I didn't feel like digging too deep on the population values.

For my numbers above, I first looked for a way to combine the state numbers together into values for all the US, but then realized the CDC had already done that in the last 85 rows of the file.  Just summed them up, and divided by the number of weeks in each year (so far).  Number also won't be perfect at the end/beginning of a year, as weeks overlap a bit, but that should have minimal effect overall.

If you download the file, I used column E (all causes) to compile the data above.  Columns R and S are the columns for COVID-19 causes of death.

Edit:  Looking at the death data from a per week standpoint is really interesting.   Deaths took off in April, then started to settle back down in May.  Even though we have more widespread cases now, it looks like April was when we just had no idea how to treat it (and hospitals were more overwhelmed in hotspots), but as time has gone by, treatments have improved, and the death rate has come back down quite a bit.

Second Edit:  I probably should have thrown out the week ending 8/15.  The death rate is way down, so it is probably a preliminary number and going to be revised upwards

eastsideTim said:

Edit:  Looking at the death data from a per week standpoint is really interesting.   Deaths took off in April, then started to settle back down in May.  Even though we have more widespread cases now, it looks like April was when we just had no idea how to treat it (and hospitals were more overwhelmed in hotspots), but as time has gone by, treatments have improved, and the death rate has come back down quite a bit.

I think case counts were low in April because we weren't testing very much, not necessarily because there were fewer actual cases. You can see that by looking at the number of hospitalizations vs the number of cases. The cases and hospitalizations clearly align with the second wave, so it's pretty likely that there were probably twice as many cases in April as we were officially counting.  They're clearly getting better at treating it though, as the second wave in hospitalizations was pretty similar in magnitude to the first, but resulting deaths are roughly half what they were back in April.

It looks like this is the new version of the discussion from the "when is it time to panic" thread. 

I think it would be interesting to see if the distribution of deaths by age is consistent from April through August. 

Im curious if the decrease is due to a specific age group seeing a significant reduction. i.e.- Are we doing a better job keeping it out of nursing homes? 

It would also be interesting to know if any particular group is seeing significant increases in hospitalizations, such as college students or young adults?

In reply to eastsideTim :

Thank you for this work. I have a feeling, as always , it's more complicated than raw data. I appreciate you putting in the effort on this. 
 

I have a feeling the initial image I had was manipulated in a manner to get the desired results, which is what I wanted to know.