Sturgis is on!

STURGIS, S.D. -- Thousands of bikers poured into the small South Dakota city of Sturgis on Friday as the 80th Sturgis Motorcycle Rally rumbled to life despite fears it could lead to a massive coronavirus outbreak.

The rally could become one of the largest public gatherings since the pandemic began, with organizers expecting 250,000 people from all over the country to make their way through Sturgis during the 10-day event. That would be roughly half the number of previous years, but local residents — and a few bikers — worry that the crowds could create a “super-spreader” event.


Many who rode their bikes into Sturgis on Friday expressed defiance at the rules and restrictions that have marked life in many locales during the pandemic. People rode from across the country to a state that offered a reprieve from coronavirus restrictions, as South Dakota has no special limits on indoor crowds, no mask mandates and a governor who is eager to welcome visitors and the money they bring.

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Stevicus said:

Harleys everywhere, masks nowhere: Sturgis draws thousands

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Saint Frankenstein said:

What idiotic fools.

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Flame said:

Don't expect Harley riders to be smart.

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Saint Frankenstein said:

I always thought Harleys were ugly for the most part.

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Shaul said:

The annual motorcycle gatherings in Sturgis, SD are proceeding as usual.
Annual Sturgis rally expecting 250K, stirring virus concerns

Some think it should not be held due to COVID virus concerns. Perhaps they should go to Sturgis and politely ask that the motorcyclists all just go home. That might work. Or not.

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Saint Frankenstein said:

I always thought Harleys were ugly for the most part.

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Hubert Farnsworth said:

I'm not sure what your point is here. That the bikers are violent idiots?

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Stevicus said:

Harleys everywhere, masks nowhere: Sturgis draws thousands

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Flame said:

Don't expect Harley riders to be smart.

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Twilight Hue said:

Not all are idiots although most will be more than happy to indulge in violence with due provocation.

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ecco said:

In years past 500,000 attended. This year it's closer to 250,000, so not all are idiots.

If you had ever been to a bike week or really know people that go, you would know that most are home builders, lawyers, EMTs, and all other sectors of blue and white-collar workers. Bike weeks are far too tame for the criminal cycle element.

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Flame said:

I like the look of the FXDR 114 but beyond that I don't like cruisers so much. I prefer my naked/standards and sport bikes.

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Twilight Hue said:

I'm partial for Indian myself.

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Coronavirus cases linked to the Sturgis motorcycle rally in South Dakota last week have now reached across state lines to Nebraska, public health officials said.

At least seven Covid-19 cases in Nebraska's Panhandle region have been tied to the rally, Kim Engel, director of the Panhandle Public Health District, confirmed in an email to CNN.

The department said that contact tracing had been completed, and it declined to comment further.

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Minnesota also confirmed 15 cases of Covid-19 connected with the rally, according to Kris Ehresmann, director of the Minnesota Health Department Infectious Disease Division. Of those 15 cases, one person has been hospitalized. Health officials say they expect to see additional cases in the next few days, Ehresmann said.

South Dakota state health officials announced Thursday that a person who worked at a tattoo shop in Sturgis had tested positive for the virus and could have possibly exposed people during the event last week.

The person was an employee of Asylum Tattoo Sturgis and could have spread the virus to others on August 13-17 from 10 a.m. to 2 a.m., officials said.

Earlier this week, officials said a person who spent hours at a bar during the rally had also tested positive. That individual visited One-Eyed Jack's Saloon in Sturgis on August 11 from noon to 5:30 p.m. while able to transmit the virus to others, health officials said.

Anyone who visited either the tattoo shop or the saloon, which are located at the same address, during that period should monitor for symptoms for 14 days after the visit.

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Wandering Monk said:

Bikes, booze, brawls, drugs, wild sex:. What could go wrong?

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SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) — The hundreds of thousands of bikers who attended the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally may have departed western South Dakota, but public health departments in multiple states are trying to measure how much and how quickly the coronavirus spread in bars, tattoo shops and gatherings before people traveled home to nearly every state in the country.

From the city of Sturgis, which is conducting mass testing for its roughly 7,000 residents, to health departments in at least eight states, health officials are trying to track outbreaks from the 10-day rally which ended on Aug. 16. They face the task of tracking an invisible virus that spread among bar-hoppers and rallygoers, who then traveled to over half of the counties in the United States.

An analysis of anonymous cell phone data from Camber Systems, a firm that aggregates cell phone activity for health researchers, found that 61% of all the counties in the U.S. have been visited by someone who attended Sturgis, creating a travel hub that was comparable to a major U.S. city.

“Imagine trying to do contact tracing for the entire city of (Washington), D.C., but you also know that you don’t have any distancing, or the distancing is very, very limited, the masking is limited,” said Navin Vembar, who co-founded Camber Systems. “It all adds up to a very dangerous situation for people all over the place. Contact tracing becomes dramatically difficult.”

State health departments have reported 103 cases from people in South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin Nebraska, Montana, North Dakota, Wyoming and Washington. Health officials in South Dakota have said they don’t know how many people were exposed and have issued public warnings of possible COVID-19 exposure at five businesses popular with bikers.

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, a Republican, has defied calls to cancel large gatherings and opposes requirements to wear masks. She welcomed the event, which in previous years brought in about $800 million in tourist spending, according to the state’s Department of Tourism.

“I sat at a bar elbow-to-elbow with guys. No one was wearing masks,” said Stephen Sample, a rallygoer who rode back to Arizona last week.

He had visited a bar where health authorities later issued warnings — One-Eyed Jack’s Saloon — but said he had not had any COVID-19 symptoms. He discussed quarantining with his wife after he returned, but decided against it.

Other bikers said they had gotten tested for COVID-19 after they returned home and received negative results.

In a country where each state has been tasked with doing the heavy-lifting of responding to the pandemic, tracing every infection from the rally is virtually impossible. But the city of Sturgis is doing what it can to head off a local outbreak by holding mass testing for asymptomatic people.

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Without a nationally-coordinated testing and tracing system, containing infections in a scenario like Sturgis is “almost impossible,” said Dr. Howard Koh, a professor at the Harvard School of Public Health who worked at the Department of Health and Human Services under former President Barack Obama.

“We would need a finely orchestrated national system and we are far from that,” he said. “We are really witnessing a 50-state effort with all of them going in different directions right now.”

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