In We're not New York City: Sioux Fall Smithfield packing plant 4th largest hotspot in United States and We're not New York City, part II: Sioux Falls Smithfield pork plant closing indefinitely (and the earlier Shared meat-packing workforce: Sioux Falls COVID-19 cluster may have MN community echo), we looked at the COVID-19 cluster known as the Sioux Falls Smithfield pork processing plant.
On Monday, the news had caught the attention of the Washington Post, with the publication Griff Witte's South Dakota’s governor resisted ordering people to stay home. Now it has one of the nation’s largest coronavirus hot spots. Witte reports:
As governors across the country fell into line in recent weeks, South Dakota’s top elected leader stood firm: There would be no statewide order to stay home.
Such edicts to combat the spread of the novel coronavirus, Gov. Kristi L. Noem said disparagingly, reflected a “herd mentality.” It was up to individuals — not government — to decide whether “to exercise their right to work, to worship and to play. Or to even stay at home.”
And besides, the first-term Republican told reporters at a briefing this month, “South Dakota is not New York City.”
But now South Dakota is home to one of the largest single coronavirus clusters anywhere in the United States, with more than 300 workers at a giant pork-processing plant falling ill. With the case numbers continuing to spike, the company was forced to announce the indefinite closure of the facility Sunday, threatening the U.S. food supply.
“A shelter-in-place order is needed now. It is needed today,” said Sioux Falls Mayor Paul TenHaken, whose city is at the center of South Dakota’s outbreak and who has had to improvise with voluntary recommendations in the absence of statewide action.
But the governor continued to resist. Instead, she used a media briefing Monday to announce trials of a drug that President Trump has repeatedly touted as a potential breakthrough in the fight against the coronavirus, despite a lack of scientific evidence.
“It’s an exciting day,” she boasted, repeatedly citing her conversations with presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner. . . .
Yet as South Dakota’s experience shows, no part of the country is immune to being ravaged by the virus. And rescinding orders that people stay at home — or declining to issue them, as in the case of South Dakota and four other states — offers plenty of peril.
Reopening the country by May is “not even remotely achievable,” said TenHaken, who, like Trump and Noem, is a Republican. “We’re in the early innings of this thing in Sioux Falls.”
Oh good. Read the rest at the Washington Post.
The Star Tribune reprinted the article on Tuesday in S.D. became virus hotspot after governor refused to issue stay-at-home order.
Things didn't look so great from across the Atlantic. The Week offered an alternative headline Tuesday with COVID-19 is spreading fast in nursing homes, homeless shelters, jails, and South Dakota:
South Dakota is one of five states — all largely rural, all headed by Republican governors — that have not issued statewide shelter-in-place orders to limit the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus. "South Dakota is not New York City," Gov. Kristi Noem (R) said earlier this month. On Monday, 57 more workers at a pork processing plant in Sioux Falls tested positive for COVID-19, bringing the total at the plant "well above 300 — and making it one of the country's largest clusters," along with Chicago's Cook County Jail and the USS Theodore Roosevelt, The Washington Post reports. South Dakota currently has 868 confirmed COVID-19 cases and six deaths in a state with fewer than 900,000 residents.
Rural areas are particularly vulnerable to the economic and medical costs of the pandemic. In justifying her decision to keep South Dakota off lockdown, Noem argued that individuals, not the state, "are primarily responsible for their safety" and "entrusted with expansive freedoms." That's not true of prisons, homeless shelters, and nursing homes, all of which are also becoming significant vectors of transmission. . . .
Lovely.
Photo: South Dakota Gov. Kristi L. Noem gives an update on the coronavirus pandemic during a news conference at Monument Health in Rapid City on March 18. (Jeff Easton/AP). She had me with the Michele Bachmann eyes.
If you appreciate our posts and original analysis, you can mail contributions (payable to Sally Jo Sorensen, 600 Maple Street, Summit SD 57266) or use the paypal button in the upper right hand corner of this post. Those wishing to make a small ongoing monthly contribution should click on the paypal subscription button.
Or you can contribute via this link to paypal; use email sally.jo.sorensen@gmail.com as recipient.
Comments