LA Sheriff's Department Compton Division Is A Gang Called The Executioners

Many police agencies are gang with their thin blue and their filthy blue line flag but these LASD thugs are even more hard core than most ordinary cops. Watch the video.

Russians Beirut Explosion?

The Russian owner who abandoned the ship full of ammonium nitrate that caused the Beirut explosion has been questioned by police in Cyprus, reports say

A 2010 stock image of the MV Rhosus cargo ship, overlaid with an image from social media video of the explosion in Beirut, Lebanon, on August 4, 2020.

Hasenpusch/picture alliance via Getty Images/Business Insider

• Igor Grechushkin, the Russian owner of the ship that carried a huge cargo of explosives to Beirut, which exploded years later, was questioned by Cypriot police on Thursday, reports say.
• Grechushkin abandoned the MV Rhosus and its cargo of 2,750 tons of explosive ammonium nitrate in 2014. Lebanese authorities impounded the cargo until Tuesday's catastrophic explosion.
• Police said the businessman, who resides in Cyprus, was "very willing to come forward" for police questioning, according to In-Cyprus News.
• Grechushkin is not suspected of any wrongdoing, since Lebanese authorities were response for the dangerous state the cargo was left in, Cyprus police spokesperson Christos Andreou told MailOnline.
• Business Insider has been unable to reach Grechushkin for comment.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Cypriot police have questioned Igor Grechushkin, the Russian businessman whose ship carried the explosive cargo that devastated Beirut on Tuesday, according to news reports.

Grechushkin was the owner of the MV Rhosus, the ship that carried 2,750 tons of explosive ammonium nitrate, before abandoning it in Beirut in 2014.

Those materials were stored in Beirut's port for six years, before they detonated in Tuesday's catastrophic explosion, as Business Insider reported.

The 43-year-old is based in Limassol, Cyprus, according to multiple reports in local media there. The island state is a common haunt for wealthy Russians.

Lebanese authorities have placed numerous port officials — who were repeatedly warned about the dangers of storing the explosive materials — under house arrest pending an investigation, according to the BBC.

Cyprus police offered assistance to Interpol and Lebanese police after Grechushkin was identified as the former owner of the Rhosus.

A police spokesperson said that Grechushkin, a Cypriot resident, was "very willing to come forward," according to In-Cyprus News, an online news site.

Cyprus police spokesperson Christos Andreou told MailOnline that the interview lasted several hours. "He is not facing any charges, nor is it likely that he will," he said.

"The request came in late Thursday and we acted on it immediately. It was a list of questions that authorities in Beirut wanted Grechushkin to answer."

Andreou told the outlet that Grechushkin was not suspected of wrongdoing given that authorities in Beirut took charge of the cargo years ago and were responsible for storing it.

Police said the details of the interview, which have not yet been made public, will be passed to Beirut officials, according to Reuters. The police spokesperson did not identify the person interviewed to Reuters, but an unnamed security source said it was Grechushkin.

—Ayman Abdel Nour (@aabnour) August 5, 2020

The Siberian Times published a picture purporting to be of Grechushkin, posing on motorcycle. Business Insider has been unable to verify if the image is genuine.

Business Insider has been unable to reach Grechushkin for comment.

Read the original article on Business Insider

Number of Americans who plan to get vaccinated falls to 42% — a new low

YouGov coronavirus poll: Number of Americans who plan to get vaccinated falls to 42% — a new low

So far, most of the conversation about COVID-19 vaccines has focused on the question of whether researchers can develop an effective vaccine in record time. 

But maybe we should start asking another question as well: Will enough Americans actually get the vaccine for it to be effective? 

“It’s not a vaccine that will save us,” says Harvard Global Health Institute director Ashish Jha. “It’s vaccination.” 

For a COVID-19 vaccine to actually stop the pandemic, scientists estimate that at least 60 percent of the population — and probably more like 75 or 80 percent — would need to be vaccinated, a number that depends on many factors, including the efficacy of the vaccine itself and how widely the virus has already spread. 

With that in mind, Yahoo News and YouGov have been polling the American people for the past few months: “If and when a coronavirus vaccine becomes available, will you get vaccinated?”

The trend lines have been discouraging. 

At first, responses were mostly favorable. In early May, 55 percent of Americans said yes, they would get vaccinated. But that number shrank in each subsequent survey, slipping to 50 percent in late May and 46 percent in early July. 

Now the latest Yahoo News/YouGov poll, conducted July 28 to 30, shows that just 42 percent of Americans plan to get vaccinated for COVID-19 — the smallest share to date. 

The outlook for universal vaccination is clouded by political considerations from both sides: skepticism about medical authority and expertise (more common among Trump supporters), and suspicions (mostly among Democrats) that the administration is cutting corners on safety to rush a vaccine into production before the election. 

Together, these forces threaten to undermine COVID-19 vaccination in the U.S.

Vaccines against different diseases vary in their effectiveness. The efficacy of the measles vaccine is 95 percent to 98 percent, which means that If 100 people who haven’t been exposed to the measles were given that vaccine, 95 to 98 of them wouldn’t get infected (on average). The efficacy of the flu vaccine generally ranges from 40 percent to 60 percent. The more effective a vaccine is, the fewer vaccinated people it takes to stop a pandemic. The reverse is also true — as efficacy falls, coverage must rise.

Last month, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said it would be willing to approve a COVID-19 candidate vaccine with an efficacy of 50 percent. Such a vaccine would help slow the virus’s spread, but it probably wouldn’t extinguish the U.S. epidemic — even if all Americans got vaccinated.   

If, say, only 42 percent of Americans got such a vaccine, then many lives would still be saved. As with the flu vaccine, some COVID-19 vaccines may not prevent infection entirely, but they could still prepare a person’s immune system and lessen symptoms, possibly eliminating them altogether. Transmission would be tamped down.

Even so, the pandemic would continue.

Experts are optimistic that the efficacy of whatever COVID-19 vaccines emerge will be higher than 50 percent. They’re also hopeful that uptake — i.e., the percentage of the population that agrees to get vaccinated in the near term — will exceed the 42 percent who already say they’re on board. 

There’s good reason for hope. In the Yahoo New/YouGov polls, the number of Americans who say they won’t get vaccinated (between 19 and 25 percent) is lower than the number who say they’re not sure (between 26 and 33 percent). Together, the yeses and the not-sures account for about three-quarters of the population. 

Given the unprecedented speed of the current development process — it’s possible that a COVID-19 vaccine could arrive three years faster than any previous vaccine — the public’s anxiety about cutting corners is understandable. Overall, 34 percent of Americans say they are “very concerned” about the safety of “fast-tracked” COVID-19 vaccines, according to the latest Yahoo News/YouGov survey. Another 35 percent say they are somewhat concerned.

“Why should we expect Americans to agree to a vaccine before one is even available?” coronavirus expert Natalie Dean, an assistant professor of biostatistics at the University of Florida, recently wrote in the New York Times. “I’m a vaccine researcher, and even I would place myself in the ‘not sure’ bucket. What we have right now is a collection of animal data, immune response data and safety data based on early trials and from similar vaccines for other diseases. The evidence that would convince me to get a COVID-19 vaccine, or to recommend that my loved ones get vaccinated, does not yet exist.”

Once the large “phase III” or “efficacy” trials that are just getting underway deliver such evidence, the thinking goes, then a lot of not-sures will transform into yeses. And once a vaccine that regulators deem safe and effective is actually widely available — and once people see other people getting vaccinated without incident — then uptake will snowball. A new CBS News poll, for instance, shows that 50 percent of Americans say they will “wait and see” what happens to others before getting vaccinated themselves. 

Nathanael Carlson of Nevada opens a coronavirus test kit during a preview of a COVID-19 testing site in Las Vegas. (Ethan Miller/Getty Images)

“It seems likely to me that many activities will require a vaccine, including many schools and some employers,” data journalist Nate Silver recently predicted. “If people see a vaccine as a ticket back to normal life, not just for society but also in a more literal way for themselves personally, that could encourage more vaccination.”   

Yet there’s also reason to think people could be swayed in the opposite direction — that is, against getting vaccinated. 

Just look what happened in the latest Yahoo News/YouGov poll when Americans were asked the same question — “Will you get vaccinated?” — but this time under various (realistic, even likely) conditions.

Would you take a vaccine if it caused side effects such as fever and headaches in one-third of recipients? 

The yeses fell from 42 percent to 35 percent. The nos soared from 27 percent to 40 percent. And the not-sures fell from 32 percent to 25 percent. 

Think about that for a second. Roughly 7 percent of those who said yes and another 7 percent of those who said they were not sure switched to no after finding out they might have a 1 in 3 chance of experiencing a fever or headache after getting inoculated against a virus that has killed more than 155,000 Americans since February. 

Common side effects, in other words, were enough to transform COVID-19 vaccination from something that Americans favored by 15 points to something they opposed by 5.

Would you take a vaccine if it was only 60 percent effective at preventing COVID-19 infection? 

Even more people said no in this scenario: 43 percent. Just 34 percent said yes and 23 percent said they were unsure. 

Would you take a vaccine if it required multiple doses over a couple of weeks?

This was the most acceptable scenario, with the yeses (39 percent) and the nos (38 percent) evenly divided. Still, those numbers represented a 3-point decline for the yeses and an 11-point increase for the nos.  

Would you take a vaccine if it required waiting in line for hours at a time or scheduling an appointment weeks in advance?

Nope — at least not according to 42 percent of Americans. Again, just 39 percent said yes.  

Across the board, information about the potential downsides of vaccination — discomfort, inconvenience, less-than-total protection against the virus — reduced the number of people who said they would get vaccinated by several percentage points (3 to 7) while slashing the number who said they were unsure by more (7 to 13). 

In all cases, the nos gained ground.

This suggests that Americans are just as ready to reject a potential COVID-19 as embrace it — especially because every one of these conditions is more likely than not to apply. In fact, all of them might apply at once. 

Around one-third of the young, healthy people dosed with the COVID-19 vaccine under development by Oxford University and the drug giant AstraZeneca “experienced moderate or severe chills, fatigue, headache, malaise, and/or feverishness.” 

One of the other most promising vaccines, from Moderna, seems to require two doses. 

Again, the FDA’s efficacy threshold is 50 percent, which is lower than 60 percent. 

And it’s hard to imagine how a country that has taken six months to administer 52 million COVID-19 tests will be able to quickly administer 300 million doses of a vaccine — or 600 million, if a booster is required. 

As a recent Washington Post report put it, “Deploying the vaccine to people in the United States and around the world will test and strain distribution networks, the supply chain, public trust and global cooperation. It will take months or, more likely, years to reach enough people to make the world safe.”

Given how fragile Americans’ current support for COVID-19 vaccination appears to be — a product, in part, of the tenacious anti-vaccination movement that has taken hold in the U.S. during the past decade or so — trust and cooperation may ultimately make the difference between a successful vaccine and an unsuccessful one. 

It’s easy to imagine any number of ways that trust could be squandered and cooperation sabotaged — politics and polarization chief among them. 

A Black Lives Matter counterprotester chants slogans during an "anti-mask" rally at the Ohio Statehouse in Columbus. (Megan Jelinger/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

When asked about safety, nearly identical numbers of Republicans, Democrats and independents told Yahoo News and YouGov that they were “very” or “somewhat” concerned: about 70 percent. And even though Democrats tend to be about 20 points more likely than Republicans to say they will get vaccinated, Democratic intent to get the vaccine (down 15 points) has actually fallen more since early May than Republican intent (down 10 points). 

Why? Probably because Democrats don’t trust President Trump to keep politics out of the process, considering that he has tied his reelection hopes to the vaccine, and the administration once announced an October (i.e., preelection) deadline for “broad access to the public.” 

Meanwhile, only 26 percent of those who intend to vote for Trump say they trust experts such as “the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and public health authorities” to “judge the risks of vaccines.” Among Joe Biden voters, that number is 68 percent. 

With most experts predicting that a vaccine could arrive this winter, in the wake of what’s sure to be a very heated election, almost any misstep could transform it from a possible public health triumph into a politicized disappointment: supply-chain snafus, inequitable distribution, shortcuts on safety, inadequate expectation-setting about otherwise tolerable side effects or imperfections. 

It’s a political minefield, and neither party is immune. 

To make a COVID-19 vaccine work, Americans of all ideologies will need to get vaccinated. For months, we’ve been talking about the medical side of vaccination — and despite encouraging signs, there’s still no guarantee that a safe, effective vaccine will arrive on schedule. 

But even if it does, the latest data suggests another, perhaps more unsettling possibility: that America could get the medicine right and still mess this up.

Trump's HBO Interview With with Jonathan Swan of Axios

Trump's Train Wreck HBO Interview With with Jonathan Swan of Axios

OpEd: Anyone who defends Trump after this vile lie fest deserves terminal rectal cancer.

President Donald Trump’s HBO interview with Jonathan Swan of Axios contained a number of jaw-dropping moments.

Trump bluntly dismissed the late Rep. John Lewis, a civil rights icon, while offering well-wishes for Ghislaine Maxwell, the longtime associate of child sex predator Jeffrey Epstein, who is in custody and facing her own charges.

But Swan said on MSNBC on Tuesday that the moment that stood out to him was the wild back-and-forth they had on the coronavirus pandemic.

“He is not confronting reality when it comes to the virus,” Swan said. “And he is reaching for data points that are good for publicity or sound good, but are not actually the best metrics for revealing what’s going on in this country.”

Trump argued that the U.S. had the best coronavirus numbers in the world because of the extensive testing, despite nearly 160,000 deaths, and repeated his claim that there can be too much testing.

“You know there are those that say, you can test too much,” Trump said. “You do know that.”

“Who says that?” Swan asked.

“Oh, just read the manuals,” Trump said. “Read the books.”

Speaking on MSNBC on Tuesday, Swan said Trump never named the books or manuals, and added that there’s “no credible public health expert who is suggesting that there is a danger to testing too much.”

He also said Trump’s claim that the United States is doing the most testing isn’t particularly meaningful in context.

“The reason the U.S. has had to do all these tests is because the virus spread undetected like wildfire through this country in February, March, April, and it took a very long time to get the testing working and effective,” Swan pointed out. “And we’re still not there with these delays, so people are walking around for, in some cases 10, 11 days, spreading the virus.”

Related: 

Trump says schools should reopen because children are 'virtually immune,' despite evidence suggesting they are not

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Lincoln Project Trolls GOP Senators With Biting Trump Impersonator Endorsements

HuffPost

Swan said public health experts agree that, without a vaccine, the best way to control the virus is with aggressive and rapid testing as well as isolation, contact tracing and quarantining.

“The fact that he’s ... still expressing ambivalence over the value of testing is stunning,” he said.

See more of Swan’s comments above.

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This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.

Randy Fine Another Lying Sack Of Shit Republican Asshole Sick With COVID-19

Randy Fine Another Lying Sack Of Shit Republican Asshole Sick With COVID-19

After two weeks battling COVID-19, State Rep. Randy Fine (R-Palm Bay) posted on Facebook that he needed his lungs X-rayed as his symptoms now included a recurring fever and a hacking chest cough. He remarked that the hydroxychloroquine therapy he had been on proved ineffective.

“I’ve had a cold who knows how many times. I have never had to deal with anything like this. And for those who want to believe that (hydroxychloroquine) is some kind of magic solution, I’ve been taking that too (I don’t oppose it, but I am tired of people pretending it is magic),” he wrote in the post.

By the time the X-ray images came back showing lung damage serious enough that doctors ordered Fine to stay for observation, a debate over hydroxychloroquine raged on Fine's Facebook page.

“Hydroxychloroquine as stated by many Doctors here and abroad is very effective. Had you been given that at the outset you might think it was magic indeed...” wrote one user.

“Was given it the day my test came back,” Fine replied. “Sorry to burst the magic bubble.”

A selfie by Republican State Rep. Randy Fine from his hospital bed at Holmes Regional Medical Center on Aug 4., 2020 where he was admitted for observation for COVDI-19.

Further on, netizens commented that surely Fine must have not been taking the drug “as prescribed” or following “protocol” (there is none established by any medical authority).

"I'm over it," Fine texted FLORIDA TODAY from his Holmes Regional Medical Center hospital bed on Monday. "People should be able to use it if they want. But people should stop pretending it is some kind of magic potion as well. If they need proof, look at me."

Since the early days of the pandemic, excitement over the possibility that cheap, widely available drugs might be repurposed to combat the novel coronavirus has spurred a flurry of research and clinical trials. But one non-peer reviewed, clinical study from France, which has been widely derided for its shoddy methodology, including randomly eliminating test subjects without explanation, and small sample size, touted the effectiveness of the decades old anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine when used alongside azithromycin the antibiotic commonly sold as Z-Pak.

Fervor around a possible miracle cure exploded, fueled by anecdotal reports that patients recovered suddenly after taking the drug. Before science could validate the results of the study, the drug was seized on by President Donald Trump who along with allies such as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis secured vast quantities of the untested “cure” at taxpayer’s expense.

More: The coronavirus therapy President Trump is gambling on is backed by weak scientific data

A pharmacist shows a bottle of the drug hydroxychloroquine on April 6, 2020, in Oakland, California. The malaria drug is not yet officially approved for fighting the new coronavirus, and scientists say more testing is needed before it's proven safe and effective against COVID-19.

But successive clinical trials following standard scientific methods failed to replicate the results touted by the flawed studies that championed the therapy. The scientific consensus is that there is no measurable impact from taking the drug, alone, or alongside other medications.

U.S. health authorities began recommending against the use of the therapy outside of the controlled setting of a clinical trial because of the risk of adverse side-effects.

More: New guidelines 'recommend against' use of much-touted COVID-19 therapy outside of clinical trials

On Jul. 22 the highly-respected journal Nature published a first of it's kind study that looked at live human lung cells and found definitively that chloroquine had no anti-viral properties when it came to the virus that causes COVID-19.

The argument appeared to be settled.

Then, last week, President Trump again touted hydroxychloroquine after a group of physicians calling themselves “America’s Frontline Doctors” staged a press conference in front of the Supreme Court building in Washington D.C.

A video of one of the doctors, Stella Immanuel, claiming that a combination of hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin and the nutritional supplement zinc were a cure quickly went viral. Even as social media platforms feverishly tried to take down the video for containing false and misleading claims it was re-posted by President Trump, major right-wing personalities and Donald Trump Jr.

A screenshot from the Tea Party Patriots website shows video of the group that calls itself America's Frontline Doctors speaking earlier this week in Washington.

Dr. Immanuel’s credentials have since come under scrutiny, along with her prior claims that certain real-life ailments are caused by sexual intercourse with demons.

This prompted assistant secretary for Health and Human Services, Adm. Brett Giroir, who was appointed to the White House's coronavirus task force to coordinate testing efforts, to say on 'Meet the Press' Sunday that it was time to "move on" and that the government does not recommend the therapy.

More: Hydroxychloroquine not effective; time to 'move on:' White House coronavirus testing chief Giroir

"The most well-designed studies so far, that are not anecdotal, but are actual studies, have indicated that there does not appear to be any beneficial effect on the use of hydroxychloroquine," said Jay Wolfson a public health policy expert and senior associate dean at the University of South Florida's medical school.

Despite this, believers in the treatment have persisted.

“He didn’t use the HCQ correctly,” a comment said on Randy Fine’s page. “You must take zinc with the hydroxychloraquine. (sic) The zinc is the magic bullet and the hydroxychloraquine (sic) carries it so it can prevent viral replication. Just curious, did you take the zinc too?”

“Yup. Sorry to burst the magic bubble,” Fine shot back.

A selfie by Republican State Rep. Randy Fine from his hospital bed at Holmes Regional Medical Center on Aug 4., 2020 where he was admitted for observation for COVDI-19.

In fact Fine said he took the drugs on the recommendation and prescription of his doctor, and contrary to assertions that the public is being denied access to the drug, Fine said he had no problem filling his prescription at CVS.

Certain states have curtailed easy access to hydroxychloroquine to prevent hoarding that was endangering access for patients with Lupus who also need the drug. But anybody with a prescription from a doctor willing to prescribe it for COVID-19, in theory, has access.

Fine has now stopped responding to commenters asking about whether he was taking the therapy.

"I just got tired of every time I made an update people stating that if I just took (hydroxychloroquine) I'd be magically healed which was particularly frustrating because I was taking it," he told FLORIDA TODAY in a text.

"Much of COVID has become politics as opposed to science," said USF's Wolfson. "And it's an old issue of science being viewed in some social circles as being antithetical to belief systems."

Whether it was polio or smallpox, Wolfson said resistance to science and public health expertise, despite concerted public information campaigns, has always been an issue.

"It took a long enough time where enough people died or were affected by it, that both individuals and communities and political systems and communities, took action. We've only been at this for seven months in this country."

Only then, Wolfson said, will the walls individual's belief systems have erected come down.

For Fine the situation is reminiscent of the polarization over masks. "It's like people can no longer accept disagreement with their view."

It should be noted that Wolfson has been retained as an expert witness for Hillsborough County, which is fighting against a lawsuit to repeal their mask mandate brought by Republican State Rep. Anthony Sabatini (R—Howey in the Hills).

Fine, for his part, thinks it's a matter of people needing to feel comforted during a difficult time.

"I think perhaps some people are clinging to this to psychologically manage their anxiety over the disease." he continued, adding "because if some pill can magically make it go away who has to worry?"

Alessandro Marazzi Sassoon is a watchdog reporter at FLORIDA TODAY.

Contact him at 321-355-8144, or asassoon@floridatoday.com. Twitter: @alemzs

This article originally appeared on Florida Today: Hydroxychloroquine: Florida lawmaker with COVID says drug is not magic

250,000 Asshole Bikers to Defy Common Sense for Nine Days at Sturgis Rally

‘Screw COVID’: 250,000 Bikers to Defy Common Sense for Nine Days at Sturgis Rally

Op Ed: Let's hope they all die but sadly at most 2%  or 2,000 of the attendees will die if 1/2 get infected. The good news is, they will infect their asshole families and asshole friends and that will help to cleanse the gene pool.

The good news is a lot of those assholes will get drunk, get on their bike and crash and die or get maimed.

Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast/Getty

Friday is the official start of the 80th annual Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, where 250,000 people are expected to gather in the South Dakota town of that name for nine days of defying proven precautions against the spread of COVID-19.

“Nobody is social distancing and none of them are wearing masks,” local psychologist Michael Fellner told The Daily Beast. “None.”

Fellner is originally from Brooklyn in New York City, which was once the nation’s COVID-19 epicenter but has just reported three straight days without a single death from the virus. The transformation is almost certainly the result of the same precautions the bikers in Sturgis are ignoring.

The Sturgis Rally’s own official website has a “COVID tracker” tab that links to the South Dakota Health Department site, where offerings include a risk assessment for public gatherings.

“Highest risk: Large, in-person gatherings where it is difficult for individuals to remain spaced at least 6 feet apart and attendees travel from multiple areas,” it advises.

Only motorcycles are allowed into the center of tiny town of Hulett, WY which is overun by cyclists from the 61st annual Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, August 8, 2001, held in Sturgis, SD.

David McNew/Getty

As the rally’s Facebook page attests, the bikers come from across the country.

“Leaving from NH today. See ya soon!” posted Howard Saborn of New Hampshire.

“Coming for the 1st time on Saturday from Virginia,” Vickie Farmer announced.

“On our way now. Stopped in Missouri to sleep. Be there Thursday night,” Jesse Robison of Georgia posted.

“Be there Friday from San Angelo Tx.,” David Buckner said.

“On my way I ain’t scared of the media flue or as we call it round here election flue see ya soon sd,” J.F. Watson of Ohio said.

“Just call it a big protest !! And it be A-Ok!!” J. Toothman, also of Ohio, suggested.

Rod Florquest of Wyoming was among the thousands who had arrived early.

“You really have to look to see someone wearing a mask,” he reported, as though this was a good thing.

And, having come from seemingly everywhere with whatever virus they might happen to carry, they will all mingle and return home with any virus they happen to pick up. Some will have purchased one of the souvenir T-shirts that retired school counselor Linda Chaplin of Sturgis saw a street vendor selling. The front reads:

“Screw COVID-19

I came to Sturgis”

David McNew/Getty

That is far from what the 70-year-old Chaplin imagined when she initially learned of the pandemic.

“One of my first thoughts was, ‘Oh, we won’t have the rally this year,’” she told The Daily Beast.

She allows that she is “not a rally person,” having in the past hopped on a bicycle to negotiate the annual gridlock of Harleys. But she understands the economic importance of the event to the town, having in past years picked up some extra money sewing patches on jackets. She nonetheless did not expect her town to prize livelihoods over lives.

“I was rather aghast that our little town was still planning to go ahead with the rally,” she said.

Chaplin was among the citizens who addressed Mayor Mark Carstensen and the City Council at a June 10 hearing about the rally. Chaplin was not speaking to strangers. She used to change the mayor’s diapers when he was a toddler and childhood friend of her daughter.

“It is my deepest conviction that this is a huge, foolish mistake to make to host the rally this year," Chaplin said at the hearing. “The government of Sturgis needs to care most for its citizens.”

She offered a solution to the rally problem: “Have a bigger one next year.”

Other speakers included ICU nurse Linda Janovy, who said the regional medical facilities are not equipped to handle an outbreak.

“We have freedom, but we also have responsibility,” she said. “You are not going to make everybody happy. Your responsibility is to keep the public safe, as safe as you can.”

Then came Lynn Burke, a nurse at the local VA facility.

“What’s the price of human life?” she asked. “I hear a lot of people saying we’re going to lose money. What about the lives we’re going to lose?”

But several local business people spoke of how dependent they are on the revenue generated by the rally. And there were also folks such as a lifelong Sturgis resident named Bob Davis.

“Freedom, God, and Donald Trump,” he said.

The City Council had never considered whether or not to approve the rally because that had never been a question. There had only been the formality of approving the necessary road closures. The council did so again on June 15 even though a survey showed that 60 percent of Sturgis residents favored canceling this year's rally.

Sturgis officials sought to calm rally opponents by saying the city was seeking to reduce the turnout by curtailing the usual advertising. The official Sturgis website nonetheless listed various exciting events for anyone tempted to attend. There was this:

“JOIN US AUGUST 10TH, 2020 FOR THE 18TH ANNUAL MAYOR’S RIDE!! The City of Sturgis is excited to be hosting the 18th Annual Sturgis Mayor’s Ride during the 80th Annual City of Sturgis Motorcycle Rally! This ride has been a special part of the City of Sturgis Motorcycle Rally; not only for the amazing beauty of the Black Hills but that it brings people together from all over the word [world].”

America’s Biggest Biker Bar Goes Up in Flames

The ultimate justification offered by the mayor and other city officials was that the hordes of bikers were going to come anyway. They noted that Rod Woodruff, owner of the Buffalo Chip campground and concert venue, had announced his intention to be open for a 39th consecutive rally. The campground’s Facebook page had this posting with a message from a Hollywood actor:

“Hey there, Tom Berenger here. Have you heard? Well, my friend Rod Woodruff at the Buffalo Chip let me know that Sturgis 2020, the 80th anniversary, is ON! I don’t know about you, but I’m packin’ her up here. I hope to see ya out there. God bless America. And God bless the Buffalo Chip.”

The Buffalo Chip is the area’s biggest, a biker mecca. It is also just outside the city limits and an incorporated town unto itself. Sturgis could do nothing to regulate it.

“We’re just celebrating good old American freedom,” Woodruff told The Daily Beast on Wednesday.

He said he had unfolded the world’s largest American flag on July 3, so Trump could see it while flying over on the way to the event at nearby Mount Rushmore.

Trump Uses Mount Rushmore Event to Sic Supporters on ‘Evil’ Protesters

Even though the rally did not officially begin until Friday, bikes had started to arrive mid-week.

“What a release to hear the sound of Harley-Davidson engines in the campground again,” Woodruff said. “Just marvelous.”

He figured the turnout would at least equal—maybe exceed—last year’s. He has had several bands cancel on him in recent weeks as a result of COVID-19 concerns, but others had signed on. And he had additional events such as the Lingerie Fighting Championship.

The producer of the all-woman lingerie event, Sean Donnelly, assured The Daily Beast that the participants had been offered a chance to opt out of the rally. He added that they would be staying at a hotel 30 miles away in Rapid City and would be bused in two hours before the bouts, returning directly to the hotel afterwards. They would have custom-designed masks.

“Not a bad look,” Donnelly said. “Of course, they won’t be fighting in them.”

Few of the quarter-million people expected to attend the rally will likely be doing anything in masks. A shopkeeper friend of Chaplin’s made an attempt at humor on Facebook.

“Welcome rally goers, we’re dying to serve you,” the shopkeeper posted.

“Not funny,” Chaplin replied.

The 2003 Sturgis rally.

Scott Olson/Getty

Chaplin and her husband usually leave town during the rally and decided to depart two days early this year. She will return to a county where there have been only 82 COVID-19 cases, but there is no telling what the rally will leave behind besides piles of garbage by which the city estimates the number of attendees. She has a son and a daughter who teach in the Sturgis schools and grandchildren who attend them.

To add to her worries, Gov. Kristi Noem has declared that all South Dakota families should send their kids back to school without masks.

“We believe that when it comes to children, masks have the potential to do more harm than good,” Noem wrote in a fundraising email.

During an appearance on The Ingraham Angle on Fox News, Noem voiced support for the rally.

“We know we could have these events, get people information, let them protect their health, but still enjoy their way of life and enjoy events like the Sturgis motorcycle rally,” she said.

Michael Fellner and his wife, Carol, will wait out the rally in self-quarantine on their eight acres just outside of town.

“I think this year we are on the road to making a super-spreading event,” she said. “Not just for your state, not just for your region, but for your country. That’s my statement.”

Michael said of the rally, “The sad thing is that you find common sense is not as common as people believe.”

He suggested what deprived Sturgis of that sense.

“I hate to put it that way, but it’s the smell of money.”

Michael noted that one of his daughters and her husband are Broadway actors. The daughter had already taken a break to concentrate on being a mom. The son-in-law lost a starring role when Broadway shut down.

“He’s now selling insurance,” Michael said.

The consolation is that the virus has been brought under control in New York, as it likely could be everywhere if everyone followed the city’s example.

But COVID can just as easily spike anywhere that example is ignored. And the virus might be spreading across the country on motorcycles by the end of next week.

“This is going to be just the start of it,” Linda Chaplin said.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

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