A Superspreading Event: The Sturgis Motorcycle Rally and Covid-19 [pdf]

The authors thoroughly outline their approach (and its limitations) based on available literature.

What specific criticism do you have?

I'm guessing there is some subtext here that an armchair analyst isn't going to catch from reading just this paper. Perhaps, for example, the cost of asymptomatic cases is there because "asymptomatic" doesn't actually mean "no symptoms at all", it means "the patient didn't subjectively feel ill enough to seek care." In which case there probably is some real cost to factor into the average. Or perhaps the argument is that asymptomatic cases still carry some risk of secondary effects such as myocarditis that absolutely need to be taken into account and averaged into the group from a public health perspective.

It's hard to say for sure, since the paper clearly isn't written for a non-expert audience and therefore doesn't spend much time on defining jargon.

"We first use the Department of Transportation (2016) guidance on value per statistical life (VSL) and severity/injury estimates as a basis for our non-fatal valuations by category. After updating the figures for earnings and inflation the DOT guidance recommends using a VSL of about $11 million in 2019 dollars. We use the severity classifications in the DOT guidance as a basis for our non-fatal valuations. DOT (2016) recommends using six different severity categories in benefit-cost analyses including Level 1 (minor), which corresponds to using a 0.3 percent amount of the VSL, Level 2 (moderate), which uses about a 5 percent amount,Level 3 (serious), which uses about a10 percent amount,Level 4 (severe), which uses about a 27 percent amount fraction,Level 5 (critical), which uses about a 59 percent amount,and Level 6 (unsurvivable) which uses a 100 percent amount(the full VSL). We therefore value asymptomatic cases at about $11,000 (in 2019 dollars) each which corresponds to using a 0.1 percent amount of the VSL in DOT (2016)."

0.1% of a statistical life is about a month? It's also a third of the "minor" classification.

How would you value it? $0? Clearly, that's not right.[1] Less than $11,000? More?

[1] Consider a new infectious disease which has only minor symptoms immediately, but may have unknown health consequences in the future.

This is June 25th.

"Fewer than 200 ICU beds available in Arizona as state reports more than 60,000 coronavirus cases."

https://www.abc15.com/news/state/fewer-than-200-icu-beds-ava...

This is July 3rd.

"State health officials say the capacity of hospital intensive care units is at an all-time high of 91%.

The number of people hospitalized Thursday due to a suspected or confirmed case of COVID-19 was 3,013, according to the Arizona Department of Health Services. It’s the first time reaching 3,000."

https://apnews.com/46a23bcf72b624dc25d7703dc269c727

That's a pretty scary timeline. Things got real serious real quick in less than a month.

Check out this graph from Arizona department of health 'Hospital COVID-like & Influenza-like illness Surveillance.'

https://www.azdhs.gov/preparedness/epidemiology-disease-cont...

Maybe it's spurious correlation, but I'd bet money the May 25th memorial day weekend had something to do with that big spike you see ramping up May 31. Memorial day also happened to feature thousands of people from another state flooding into Lake Havasu and other, similar cities without mask restrictions, and visiting bars, restaurants, etc.

Bear in mind, there were no mask restrictions in AZ before that peak.

Nobody has an RCT, so we're all just whiteboarding it to some extent.

"The inside/outside dynamic is not the only part of the location that matters for the dangers these events present. The big protests mainly occurred in big cities and were mainly attended by locals. The Sturgis rally happens in the middle of nowhere, people come from all over, and then head back home to places that are generally more rural. Sturgis is therefore much more likely to spread the virus to people and places who wouldn't have had much exposure otherwise."

Refusing to collect that data point is completely understandable from a public health standpoint. There is substantiated concern that people may end up on cop shitlists for attending a protest, we know that there is police overreach, and the only way to keep the pigs out of the trough is not providing it at all. NYPD is notoriously corrupt. If any single person ended up being harassed by the cops as a result for telling the truth no one will ever work with a contact tracer again.

Sad that the cops can't restrain themselves in a time of public emergency but that's the reality we live in.

The data and official guidance I have seen supports the idea that masks (and being outdoors) significantly reduces risk.

The constitution deliberately makes no such distinction.

That's irrelevant. The virus doesn't care about the urgency. If both presented the exact same danger to the population, they should be handled exactly the same. Otherwise we are not arguing science but politics.