Friday is the official start of the 80th annual Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, where another 250,000 people are expected to gather in South Dakota’s nine-day call to challenge proven and proven precautions against the spread of COVID-19.
“No one is a socialist and no one wears masks,” psychologist Michael Fellner told the Daily Beast. I said, “None.”
Fellner is originally from Brooklyn, New York, which was once the epicenter of the country’s COVID-19, but has just reported three consecutive days without a single death from the virus. The transformation is almost in fact the result of the same precautions that Sturgis motorcyclists ignore.
The official Sturgis Rally comes with a “COVID Tracker” tab that refers to the South Dakota Department of Health, which includes a threat assessment for public meetings.
“The biggest risk: giant face-to-face meetings where it’s hard for Americans to stay at least 6 feet away and participants from various places,” he advises.
As the Rally Facebook shows, motorcyclists come from all over the country.
“Leaving NH today. See you!” was published by Howard Saborn of New Hampshire.
“Coming for the first time on Saturday from Virginia,” Vickie Farmer said.
“In the now. Arrested in Missouri for sleep. Be there Thursday night,” said Jesse Robison of Georgia.
“Be there on Friday from San Angelo Tx.” David Buckner.
“Along the way, I’m not afraid of the media or, as we call them here, the election soon,” said J.F. Watson of Ohio.
“Call it a wonderful protest!! And there’s A-Ok!” suggested J. Toothman, also from Ohio.
Rod Florquest of Wyoming among the thousands who had arrived early.
“You have to look at someone who wears a mask, ” he said, as if he were a smart thing to do.
And, coming from everywhere with the virus they can carry, they’ll all mix and go home with any viruses they contract. Some may have bought one of the souvenir T-shirts that retired school counselor Linda Chaplin of Sturgis saw sold to a street vendor. The front says:
“Vis COVID-19
I came here to Sturgis.
This is a cry of what Chaplin, 70, imagined when he heard about the pandemic.
“One of my first thoughts was, ‘Oh, we probably wouldn’t have a rally this year,'” he told the Daily Beast.
She admits that she is “a rally person”, who in the afterlife got on a motorcycle to negotiate the annual lockout of the Harleys. But she understands the economic importance of the occasion to the city, as in recent years she has collected extra money to sew patches on the jackets. However, he hoped his people would assume the livelihoods before life.
“I was pretty distraught that our small town was making plans to move forward with the rally,” she said.
Chaplin among the citizens who spoke to Mayor Mark Carstensen and the City Council at a June 10 hearing on the demonstration. Chaplin didn’t communicate with strangers. She used to replace the mayor’s diapers as a child and friend of her daughter since childhood.
“It’s my deepest conviction that this is a huge, stupid mistake to host this year’s meeting,” Chaplin said at the hearing. “The Sturgis government will have to be at most concerned about its citizens.”
She proposed one to the rally problem: “Having a bigger one next year.”
Other speakers included intensive care nurse Linda Janovy, who said no regional medical services are provided to address an epidemic.
“We have freedom, but we also have responsibilities,” he said. “You’re not going to make everyone happy. Your duty is to make sure as much of the public as possible.”
Then came Lynn Burke, a nurse at the VA facility.
“What is the value of human life?” She asked. “I hear a lot of other people say we’re going to lose money. What about the lives we’re going to lose?”
But several local entrepreneurs said they depended on the profits generated by the rally. And there were also other people like a Sturgis resident named Bob Davis.
“Freedom, God and Donald Trump,” he said.
The city council had never thought about whether or not to approve the demonstration because it had never been a problem. It had only been the formality of approving mandatory road closures. The council did so on June 15, a vote showed that 60% of Sturgis’s citizens were in favor of cancelling this year’s demonstration.
Sturgis officials sought to calm the conflicting parties to the demonstration by saying that the city sought to reduce participation by cutting back the same regular publicity. However, Sturgis’ official online website has indexed exciting occasions for anyone tempted to attend. There was this:
“JOIN US ON AUGUST 10, 2020 FOR THE 18TH ANNUAL MAYOR’S EVENT! The city of Sturgis is very happy to host the 18th annual race of the Mayor of Sturgis in the 80th annual motorcycle rally of the city of Sturgis! special component of the motorcycle rally in the city of Sturgis; not only because of the good look of Black Hills, but also because of the fact that it brings together other people from all over the world.
The latest justification presented through the mayor and other city officials that hordes of cyclists would still come. They noted that Rod Woodruff, owner of Campground and Buffalo Chip Concert Hall, had announced his goal of being open for 39th consecutive rally. The campsite’s Facebook page contained this post with a message from a Hollywood actor:
“Hello, Tom Berenger. Did you hear that? Well, my friend Rod Woodruff from Buffalo Chip let me know that Sturgis 2020, the 80th anniversary, is underway. I don’t know about you, but I’ll take him here. I hope to see you there. God bless America. And God bless the Buffalo Chip.
The Buffalo Chip is the largest in the region, the Mecca of cyclists. It is also located outside the city limits and a city built into itself. Sturgis may not do anything to him.
“We’re celebrating old American freedom,” Woodruff told the Daily Beast on Wednesday.
He said he unfurled the world’s largest American flag on July 3, so Trump can watch it fly over the once-on-the-old road near Mount Rushmore.
Although the rally did not officially begin until Friday, the motorcycles had arrived until the middle of the week.
“What a pleasure to hear the sound of Harley-Davidson engines in the camp,” Woodruff said. “Simply wonderful.”
He thinks participation would be at least equivalent (higher) to last year’s. Several tapes were canceled in recent weeks due to COVID-19 issues, but others had been registered. And he’s had more occasions like the underwear fight championship.
The manufacturer of the women’s underwear event, Sean Donnelly, trusted the Daily Beast which presented participants with the chance to withdraw from the rally. He added that they would remain in a hotel 30 miles away in Rapid City and be transported by bus within two hours of the clashes, only to return to the hotel afterwards. They’d have custom-designed masks.
“Not bad,” Donnelly said. “Of course, they may not fight in them.”
Most likely, few of the quarter of a million people who are expected to attend the rally will do something with masks. A friend of Chaplin’s merchant made a fun attempt on Facebook.
“Welcome to the rallies, we can’t wait to serve you, ” said the merchant.
“It’s not funny, ” Chaplin.
Chaplin and her husband regularly left town during the rally and made the decision to leave two days before this year. You will return to a county where there have been only 82 cases of COVID-19, however, it is not known what will leave the collection in addition to the piles of waste through which the city estimates the number of participants. He has a son and daughter who teach in Sturgis schools and the grandchildren who attend them.
To raise her concerns, Gov. Kristi Noem said all families in South Dakota send their children back to school without a mask.
“We, when it comes to children, the mask has the ability to do more harm than good,” Noem wrote in a fundraising email.
In an appearance on The Ingraham Angle on Fox News, Noem expressed support for the rally.
“We know that we can simply organize those occasions, get data about people, inform them about their health, while enjoying their way of life and enjoying occasions like the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally,” he said.
Michael Fellner and his wife Carol will be waiting for quarantined collection on their 8 acres just outside the city.
“I think this year we’re on our way to a big event,” he said. “Not only for your state, just for your region, but also for your country. That’s my statement.”
Michael said of the demonstration: “The unfortunate thing is that you don’t find an unusual sense, it’s not as unusual as other people think.”
He which put Sturgis at a disadvantage of this meaning.
“I hate to put it that way, yet it smells like money.”
Michael noted that one of her daughters and her husband are Broadway actors. The woman had already taken a break to be a mom. The son-in-law lost a title role when Broadway closed its doors.
“Now he’s promoting insurance,” Michael said.
The consolation is that the virus was controlled in New York, as would probably be the case if everyone followed the city’s example.
But COVID can accumulate seamlessly anywhere this example is ignored. And the virus may spread all over the country on motorcycles until the end of next week.
“This will be the beginning, ” said Linda Chaplin.
Special correspondent
Do you have any advice? Send him to The Daily Beast here.