South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem accused the media of lying about last year’s Sturgis Motorcycle Rally as a COVID-19 superspreader event.
“The media lied about the event,” Noem, a Republican, said Wednesday on Fox News. “For a year, they have labeled it a superspreader. That is not true. We continuously pushed back, and I’m glad that some of those facts are coming to light today.”
The facts Noem referred to is new research from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases that found at least 649 COVID-19 cases were associated with the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in South Dakota from Aug. 7-16, 2020. That number includes secondary and tertiary cases. One death was reported. Approximately 426,000 people attended the Sturgis rally.
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The researchers contacted 54 health departments (50 states plus Los Angeles, New York City, Chicago, and Washington, D.C.), 39 of which provided data. Thirty reported one or more cases linked to Sturgis, while nine reported no cases. Since not all health departments reported data, the number reported in the paper is likely an undercount.
Yet, the number of cases is much smaller than what was reported in a paper from San Diego State University’s Center for Health Economics & Policy Studies and the Institute of Labor Economics that led to nationwide criticism of Noem. That research, released in September, estimated that Sturgis caused over 267,000 COVID-19 cases and $12.2 billion in healthcare costs. The researchers used cellphone data to reach their conclusions.
Noem has consistently disputed those findings.
There is no hard and fast definition of a superspreader event.
Dr. Donald Drumford of the Cleveland Clinic has said, “When you see a large event where there’s a greater amount of transmission than would be expected, that qualifies as a superspreader.”
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A party or wedding where one or two infected people spread the virus to a few dozen would qualify. So might an event attended by 426,000 that caused 267,000 cases. But if Sturgis only caused 649 cases, it might not qualify since that amount of transmission could be lower than what was expected.
