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- Hundreds of thousands of bikers converged in Sturgis, South Dakota the first week of August for a massive annual rally. It was one of the largest public gatherings in the United States since the COVID-19 outbreak.
- Recently released phone location data shows where people went to attend the rally. The data shows people converging from much of the United States – especially the Midwest and South – including Texas, Georgia, and Arizona.
- Over the past week, there have been an average of 100 new cases of COVID-19 per day in South Dakota, a rate that has steadily increased since last month.
- Visit the Business Insider homepage for more stories.
As cases of COVID-19 continue to increase in the United States, hundreds of thousands of bikers attended a massive annual rally earlier this month in Sturgis, South Dakota, where officials of public health have not implemented a lockdown or forced people to wear masks.
Recently released phone location data shows the rally brought together people from all over the United States, especially the Midwest and South. Hundreds of thousands of people have flown to Sturgis from states currently experiencing COVID-19 outbreaks, including Arizona, Texas and Georgia.
Data aggregated by location data company X-Mode Social shows tens of thousands of mobile devices arriving in Sturgis during the first week of August, excluding devices already active in the region during the months preceding the gathering. In a video posted to Twitter, data visualization group Tectonix GEO mapped the movement of phones across the United States that were present at the rally.
—Tectonix GEO (@TectonixGEO) Aug 17, 2020
Location data companies like X-Mode Social track the precise location of smartphones around the world using software that is built into the apps that people download. The practice has drawn backlash from privacy advocates, but location data companies and their partners insist that people’s movements are anonymized and not directly linked to their identity.
It is not yet clear whether the Sturgis rally, which organizers expected to attract 250,000 people in total, had any effects on public health amid the COVID-19 pandemic. But social distancing and the wearing of masks were relatively rare during the rally, according to the New York Times.
“We are allowed to make our own choices,” a rally participant told The Times. “If we get it, we choose to be here.”
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