250k cases sounds steep. On perusal, the paper looks pretty thorough. http://ftp.iza.org/dp13670.pdf The governor is looney. But, the study isn't peer-reviewed. So they might both be wrong. Still, it doesn't take much sense not to have a motorcycle rally in a pandemic.
Footnote: It goes on, and of course I wouldn't consider this to be an unassailable study, but that's not the point. My complaint is that 460k of the usual ~500k Sturgis-goers treated this year like any other, while also embracing an anti-masking culture that further enabled airborne covid propagation. How many studies do we need to tell us we'd all be better off if that sort of behavior changed? What kind of a sacrifice am I to infer people would be making for one lost year of a cancelled motorcycle rally? Maybe some could convince me that it's a major loss for them, but I'm not having face-to-face socialization fun, either. Sucks, right? (hence, me spamming hubskichat) If 2020 doesn't suck, you're probably making it worse for other people, and if we can't collectively invest one or two years into the future, how am I supposed to feel confident that the wealthiest country in the world can be trusted to combat climate change? We've engineered almost half of our culture to dismiss the entire idea.Any opinions expressed in this paper are those of the author(s) and not those of IZA. Research published in this series may include views on policy, but IZA takes no institutional policy positions. The IZA research network is committed to the IZA Guiding Principles of Research Integrity.