The Sturgis Rally: A Most Interesting Science Experiment -- August 10, 2020

 As I mentioned earlier, I don't follow the coronavirus story very closely any more. As I said earlier:

I track the coronavirus story here but I don't update it very much any more. I lost interest in this story when:

• I realized they were tracking the wrong metric;
• I learned the CDC's "definition of a case" which may or may not be the same definition that all states are using;
• the issue moved from the science/medical arena to the political arena
• I realized the whole reporting / analysis was a bunch of nonsense

There is now a new wrinkle. I don't know if folks realize this. Except for a few states, the rate of rise in the number of new cases of Covid-19 being reported is slowing. And this is at a time when the number of Covid-19 tests being accomplished are increasing significantly.

Isn't that interesting? 

I would argue that the most interesting "science experiment" is now happening in South Dakota. Hopefully, the number of cyclists expected to show up actually show up. In round numbers, "they" say the normal number of cyclists that show up for the Sturgis Rally is 500,000. This year "they" estimate it will be closer to 250,000. 

It will be interesting to see the number of cases of coronavirus that South Dakota will report starting two weeks from now and going for another four weeks after that. 

In fact, one can argue that not only is this the most interesting "science experiment" going on right now, it may just be one of the most important "tests" that we could possibly have. We had a similar "test" in the early days of the pandemic here in the states when the governor of New York actively returned those with active disease back to their own nursing homes. With the data he had at the time, I probably would have done the same thing. Governor Cuomo's heart was in the right place, but unfortunately, we learned who was most vulnerable (of course, that was not surprising; that's true for seasonal flu also). 

We have no idea how many folks have now had asymptomatic Covid-19. So, if we don't see a spike in new cases four weeks from now, despite the Sturgis Rally, we will have another data point. 

I'm unaware of the CDC taking advantage of the data that could come out of the Sturgis Rally. If, in fact, the CDC is not proactively taking advantage of this science experiment, they are letting us down.

By the way, we are being told that similar large crowds, albeit much smaller, have not resulted in a surge of coronavirus cases. I'm talking about the riots / demonstrations in Seattle, Portland, and Chicago.