Emblematic of the way America has utterly fumbled our handling of the coronavirus pandemic; almost half a million people from all over the country attend a motorcycle rally, and the result is a surge in infections that they took home with them. There is no way to trace the chain of possible infections because we have next to no contact tracing program. And Republican Gov. Kristi Noem refused to restrict public gatherings or even mandate masks, choosing to emphasize "individual responsibility".

As one of the attendees, who contracted covid-19 at the rally, spent 8 days in the hospital and missed weeks of work as a result, as well as endangering his girlfriend and children, told the Washington Post:

“I was naive,” he said. “I was dumb, you know? I shouldn’t have went. I did; I can’t change that, so I just got to move forward. But sitting here just the past few days, that’s all I keep thinking about. I’m like, Jesus, look at the hell I’m going through, the hell I put everybody through. It ain’t worth it. It wasn’t. It really wasn’t.”