Health officials across the country have warned that the biker rally in Sturgis, SD has the potential to become a super-spreader event, but that’s didn’t stop thousands of bikers from flooding the small town and packing into bars and concerts without masks.
They rumbled through the streets and crowded the sidewalks, often without masks, for the start of a 10-day extravaganza so deeply rooted that Sturgis calls itself the City of Riders. WCVB reported that vendors at hundreds of tents sold motorcycle gear, food and T-shirts — one of which said, “Screw COVID. I went to Sturgis.”
“I don’t want to die, but I don’t want to be cooped up all my life either,” 66-year-old Stephen Sample told the Associated Press, explaining that he’d driven his Harley up from Arizona. He worries about getting coronavirus, he said, and was trying to steer clear of bars but ate breakfast that morning inside a diner.
