In looking at the utter failure of the elites of the United States to handle the coronavirus effectively, you can’t miss how they have continued mostly to ignore the reality of what other countries who have well handled it have done.
On Tuesday the Governor of South Dakota, Kristi Noem (who is also a former member of Congress), appeared on one of the primetime programs on Fox News and made this claim:
We knew the science told us we couldn’t stop the virus. We could slow it down and protect people who might be vulnerable and make sure we had enough hospital capacity to take care of those who would need it. But that we were going to do it together and allow people to be flexible to take care of their families and still put food on the table.
In New Zealand, where they implemented a strategy to stop the virus despite her claim science says you can’t do that, they recently had their first community coronavirus case in over two months. Even that case looks connected to the person traveling out of the country. So evidence, if not science, seems to suggest you can stop this.
The Governor also said this:
We did have tragedies and we did have losses, but we also got through it better than virtually every other state. And I think the media hates that, because it really is a testimony to what Republicans believe in, what we conservatives believe in.
In reality, if you look at the CDC’s data, South Dakota has been one of the worst states, whether looking at cases, where it has second most reported so far:
or deaths, where only four states and New York City are higher:
In South Dakota there have been 201 deaths per 100,000 people, or to put that another way, 1 out 500 South Dakotas have died.
The comparison to results in New Zealand is even worse, as there have been 25 deaths so far, not 25 per 100,000, but 25 total, or 0.51 per 100,000. If South Dakota had results like that, over 1,700 fewer people would have died because of the virus.`
