The world shook its head at people who attended the 2020 Sturgis Motorcycle Rally. And – in some sense – they’re right to do so. Attending Sturgis was an exceedingly foolish thing to do. We can’t really overstate the risks of hanging around hundreds of thousands of people without social distancing and masks. People packed the streets, packed bars, etc. You know the drill. And so, I’m not exactly going to defend attendance.

But I do like to pull back and think about the forces driving people to do this. I like to appeal to something other than callousness or stupidity when explaining the actions of others. I’m sure some are COVID-19 deniers. And still others count as the kind of deluded Trump supporters so dedicated to bootlicking they don’t mind risking their lives. I’m not talking about these groups. And they make up fewer Sturgis attendees than many readers probably think. I suspect many Sturgis attendees are just people trying to navigate a world that would’ve been unfathomable to any of us less than a year ago.

Do we use those vacation tickets we already paid for? Is it safe to attend that wedding or funeral? Will the family forgive us if we don’t? Can we visit our grandkids? What do we do if we want to socially distance, but our co-workers (or delivery person, or neighbors, or our kids’ school principal, or…any of a thousand other people) won’t cooperate?

These decisions aren’t easy. And to some degree or another almost everyone struggles through it. Sometimes people slip. They go to a bar one night. Or they hook up with someone. Or, as was the case here, they go to Sturgis. The consequences of Sturgis, of course, are more severe than the others. There are likely thousands of infections from it. Maybe tens of thousands.