Posted on 09/09/2020 7:05:58 AM PDT by where's_the_Outrage?
South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem has dismissed a report suggesting the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally was a "superspreading event" for COVID-19 that cost billions of dollars in health costs.
Researchers from the Center for Health Economics and Policy Studies at San Diego State University in California claimed event, which attracted nearly 500,000 visitors, may have resulted in 266,796 new coronavirus cases—nearly 20 percent of the 1.4 million new cases of COVID-19 recorded in the U.S. between August 2 and September 2.
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
First, using anonymized cell phone data from SafeGraph, Inc. we document that (i) smartphone pings from non-residents, and (ii) foot traffic at restaurants and bars, retail establishments, entertainment venues, hotels and campgrounds each rose substantially in the census block groups hosting Sturgis rally events. Stay-at-home behavior among local residents, as measured by median hours spent at home, fell. Second, using data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and a synthetic control approach, we show that by September 2, a month following the onset of the Rally, COVID-19 cases increased by approximately 6 to 7 cases per 1,000 population in its home county of Meade. Finally, difference-in-differences (dose response) estimates show that following the Sturgis event, counties that contributed the highest inflows of rally attendees experienced a 7.0 to 12.5 percent increase in COVID-19 cases relative to counties that did not contribute inflows. Descriptive evidence suggests these effects may be muted in states with stricter mitigation policies (i.e., restrictions on bar/restaurant openings, mask-wearing mandates). “
It is ALL assumptions and modeling, taking numbers from projected small percent increases nationally to project totals back in the assumed placed where the bikers came from.
That’s how accurate this study is. i.e. they are postulating a PROJECTED simulated number of positive cases and when it is higher than the projection they are attributing that greater number to Sturgis Motorcycle Rally. Absurd.
Any time you see a number provided by a statistician that gives a conclusion of numbers down to the single digits, know for a certainty that statistician is LYING THROUGH HIS TEETH. This is a prime example: 266,796 cases of Covid19 is just such a bogusly accurate number that is completely unknowable from statistical calculations. If the statistician were at all honest, he’s report his conclusions as “we conclude that somewhere around 250,000 cases of Covid19 could perhaps be attributed to ...”
My degree is in Economics, and I am ashamed of these so called economists. They are propagandists, not economists, cloaking their propaganda under their rubric of their supposed education. They are prostituting the discipline. It has been said that Acedemics mask their lies in jargon, but Economists know how to conceal their lies in a Masquerade Ball of statistics. They are doing that.
So you are saying Dems have the Karen vote locked up.
Meade County SD has 25,000 in a recent census. (28,000 estimated now.) The paper claimed Meade County’s infection rate increased by 6-7 per thousand. Increasing by 6 per 1000 for 25,000 people means ... less than 100 extra people got positive test results.
Tend to believe you are right & we will need a viable presidential candidate at some point in time. She looks like a possibility.....especially compared to any loser the Democrats might come up with.
Lost in the dust were a few real studies based on actual testing and contact tracing that showed only a few hundred possible new infections and one death not directly liked to COVID. This study was a fabrication of cell phone data and no actual contact tracing, but produced the right political narrative so it will be trumpeted as vindication for national shutdowns and the denigration of popular conservative Governor Kristi Noem. There will be no further studies to support this absurd methodology as with climate change the “science” is settled.
How many of the permanent residents tested positive and also were hospitalized.
I believe it was zero to none 7 days after the rally ended and 675 tonies were tested.
More likely, Bob goes to Sturgis.
Bob calls wife Babs and tells her he’s arrived safely, which is irrelevant, because the data these bozo’s are using is the GPS ping data his phone is sending out multiple times per minute to the cellular tower revealing where it is.
While Bob is in Sturgis for a week, Protesting and Riots break out in Bob’s and Bab’s home city and hundreds of BLM demonstrators and Antifa rioters spread SARS-Corona Virus to everyone in their organized riot and to people they attack. People they attack, and even themselves wind up in the ERs of local hospital where they are COVID19 tested.
Covid19 testing spikes in the riot and demonstration struck areas due to an influx of more people in the area, and high numbers of tests, thus more positive tests are reported.
Bob comes home to a sweet welcome home embrace from Babs, perfectly healthy.
Reports from the local health authority file a slight increase in the number of tests and number of positive Covid19 test results.
Idiot paper writers correlate that a motorcycle rally two thousand miles away caused the spike in the city, calculated to be among the 266,796 (exactly, not more, not less), and because motorcyclist Bob went, and his phone’s GPS proved he was there. It’s his fault. That’s obvious, because it CANNOT be possible all those protestors and demonstrators were a politically protected class and viruses don’t infect such protected classes... it’s against the law of Progressives, you know.
We measure county-level COVID-19 cases using state and county-level data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which were made available by the Kaiser Family Foundation, the New York Times, and Johns Hopkins University. 12 COVID-19 cases are analyzed over the period from June 6, 2020 through September 2, 2020. During this time frame, the mean number of cumulative COVID-19 cases per 1,000 population was 3.83 in Meade County. There was one recorded COVID-19 death over this period in the county which hosted the event; given the relatively low level of mortality before, during and after the Sturgis event, we mainly focus on cases for our short-to-medium run analyses.
They had so few serious infection cases, they had to count positive test results only.
I skimmed through the paper. . . And you hit the nail on the head. Made up data and projected made up data on what the number of purported Covid19 cases reported were going to be in each of the assumed home areas and Sturgis. . . And what they assumed it would be if it was a worst case condition IF attendees were as contagious as they assumed. SHEESH!
Synthetic control this, synthetic assumption that... and an EXACT result of 266,796 cases at their conclusion???
As I said above, such an exact number in a statistical analysis always signals completely lying asshats intended to get the attention of people totally ignorant of what a statistical result should be able to do, and look like. ABSURD!!!
They claim their results are based on data ONE MONTH post Sturgis. Sturgis concluded August 16. That would mean they’d need to sample data on September 15th to use BEFORE starting their raw data analysis. Yet they were submitting their paper for publication, meaning it had already been written, on September 2nd. I know from papers I wrote back in the dark ages, collecting, compiling, and analyzing such data is at least a several week project. I grant you that computers and the internet cuts SOME time off that, but writing, formatting, and editing (even with the typos and misused words I noted in this paper in just a quick, cursory scan through) a 63 page statistical paper still takes some reasonable amount of time for discussion, construction, formatting, editing, before assembly and writing, correlation of data and researching background literature, etc. and then the final collaboration among the four authors who are at four different locations. Let’s give that a week.
That takes them back seven days from the 2nd to just ten days post Sturgis for any data to be collected, still inside the two week gestation period of Covid19. I think we can safely assume that for the first few days post Sturgis, there is no valid data to collect. I.E. this is likely proof that their data is all bogus, and the paper written with conclusion a foregone target before they started. Which, of course, we knew already.
That Babs is SO sweet. :-)
Thanks. I knew Sturgus Toonie infections the were so minuscule they had to spin it.
This Gal had better be Pence’s VP Pick in 2024...
Meanwhile, Portland’s 100+ days riots and protests have not produced one outbreak. Hmmm.....
DEC is using the same type of flawed study to justify mask mandates.
CDC!
In the past, our reports raising questions about the accuracy of COVID-19 tests have been met with accusations of 'fearmongering' and spreading 'misinformation'.
But not today.
That's because new research from the University of Oxford’s Center for Evidence-Based Medicine and the University of the West of England has found that the swab-based technique used for most COVID-19 testing is at risk of returning "false positives" since copies of the virus's RNA detected by the tests might simply be dead, inactive material from a weeks-old infection. Although patients infected with COVID-19 are typically only infectious for a week or less, tests can be triggered by virus genetic material left over from a weeks-old infection.
The team's research involved analyzing 25 studies on the widely used polymerase chain reaction test. PCR tests use material collected with a swab - the most common type of test around the world, and especially in the US - then utilize a "genetic photocopying" technique that allows scientists to magnify the small sample of genetic material collected, which they can then analyze for signs of viral RNA.
What the researchers here have effectively found is that these PCR tests just aren't sensitive enough to distinguish if the viral material is active and infectious, or dead and inert.
"Evidence is mounting that a good proportion of ‘new’ mild cases and people re-testing positives after quarantine or discharge from hospital are not infectious, but are simply clearing harmless virus particles which their immune system has efficiently dealt with," he told the Spectator.
Professor Heneghan added that international scrutiny might be required to avoid "the dangers of isolating non-infectious people or whole communities."
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