Via the Star Tribune, Steve Groves of the Associated Press reports in Aide: Noem has no plans to get tested despite Trump event:
South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem has no plans to get tested for the coronavirus before heading back to the president's campaign trail this week, even though she attended a fundraiser with the president shortly before he tested positive.
President Donald Trump's announcement last week that he tested positive led to a flurry of testing by other politicians, including from three Minnesota congressmen and a U.S. Senate candidate who had flown on Air Force One. The Minneapolis steakhouse that catered Trump's fundraiser last Wednesday also announced that its event staff would quarantine and be tested, even though none had come into close contact with Trump.
Noem's spokesman, Ian Fury, said she has "no plans to get tested in the immediate future" because she has not been in close contact with anyone who tested positive for the coronavirus.
As Trump returned to the White House after being hospitalized, he downplayed the deadly threat of the virus, which has also infected the first lady and several White House aides. It's a sentiment that Noem has echoed as she has carved out a national following among conservatives for renouncing lockdowns and casting doubt on the usefulness of masks.
Noem tested negative for the virus on Sept. 29, a day before the Trump fundraiser in Minnesota. But she did not get close enough or spend enough time with the president to become a close contact, as defined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, according to Fury.
The CDC defines close contact as spending at least 15 minutes within six feet (1.8 meters) of someone who has an infection.
Fury said that as more White House staff and others in Trump's orbit have announced positive tests for the virus, the governor's team checks if Noem had close contact with them. They are relying on Noem's recollection. At Trump campaign events, Noem does not wear a mask but regularly poses for photos with her arms wrapped around people.
"We've taken the health concerns of #COVID19 very seriously," Noem tweeted Tuesday.
Noem has defended her hands-off approach to managing the pandemic, but COVID-19 is surging in South Dakota, which on Tuesday had the highest positivity rate of any state over the past 14 days, at 23.64%, according to The COVID Tracking Project. By comparison, the national average rate over the 14 days that ended Monday was 4.7%.
The surge led Republican Sen. Mike Rounds, who is seeking reelection, to postpone large campaign events and to limit contact among staff, according to his chief of staff, Rob Skjonsberg. Rounds' wife, Jean Rounds, was treated for cancer this year. . . .
South Dakota's surge in cases and hospitalizations, and the news of Trump's infection, have not stopped Noem from traveling or holding events. She spoke to South Dakota legislators gathered for a special session on Monday, and she will next head to Florida for a Trump rally. She is also slated to speak Friday at the American Priority Conference, a gathering of the president's supporters, at Trump National Doral hotel in Miami.
Okay then.
While Active COVID-19 cases drop for first time in six days, Jonathan Ellis reported in the Argus Leader, we're not out of the woods yet:
The number of people with COVID-19 in South Dakota hospitals increased for the third day, to 250. That number has increased by 35 people since Saturday. Since the disease was first detected in South Dakota, 1,670 people have been hospitalized with COVID-19.
Tuesday's test results were from 2,838 total tests reported to the Department of Health, for a daily positive rate of 9.8%.
People aged 30-39 accounted for the most infections Tuesday at 50.
South Dakota's COVID stats are part of the background for South Dakota's social butterfly migration for the re-election of President Trump.
One picture from that fundraiser in Minnesota was tweeted by Pioneer Press reporter Dave Orrick:
Here's a picture of South Dakota's @govkristinoem inside Wednesday's Trump fundraiser in Shorewood. (There's a big collection of cars inside the home.) Based on videos I've watched, it appears to be later that the Karaoke-ing commenced. pic.twitter.com/C5ryppJnJW
— Dave Orrick (@DaveOrrick) October 3, 2020
Earlier, WCCO News Talk Radio reported in Photos inside private Twin Cities fundraiser before Trump's diagnosis show no masks, no social distancing:
No social distancing. No masks.
WCCO political insider Blois Olson said that's what he saw on images and video taken at a Wednesday fundraiser for President Trump at the west metro home of Marty Davis, the CEO of Cambria.
Trump announced on Twitter early Friday morning that he and the First Lady had tested positive for coronavirus.
Olson said the images were on the Instagram account of Sergio Gore, one of Trump's top fund raisers.
"Staff and guests lingered after the president was there," Olson told Dave Lee on the WCCO Morning News. "They sang karaoke, they had their arms around each other."
Among the guests was South Dakota governor Kristi Noem, with Olson saying she posed for many pictures, again without a mask and not practicing social distancing. . . .
No pictures in the report--it's radio, after all-- so one will have to take Olson's word for that. In Fox 9's later Source: Attendees had minimal contact with Trump at Lake Minnetonka fundraiser, Olson tells a somewhat different story:
. . .Olson says sources he’s spoken with inside that event said all were given a rapid test before being allowed in, which adds context to pictures he’d seen of guests not wearing masks or social distancing.
“And ultimately that’s one of the reasons they all felt comfortable is because they all knew they just had a negative test before they entered the home for the fundraiser,” said Olson.
He’s also told from attendees that the president was essentially cordoned off, in theory to protect him. Now that may have wound up protecting everyone else, if the president was already contagious. . . .
Back in South Dakota, Joe Sneve reports in the Sioux Falls Argus Leader article, Gov. Kristi Noem to lawmakers: South Dakota shows lockdowns are 'useless':
Gov. Kristi Noem said Monday South Dakota has given the rest of the country an example of how to navigate through a pandemic without heavy-handed government mandates.
Noem told lawmakers during a special session of the Legislature in Pierre that while her resistance to statewide stay-at-home orders have drawn criticism, it's also provided a different approach to managing the pandemic than those taken in other states.
"As you all might imagine, these last seven months have been quite lonely at times," Noem said. "But earlier this week, one very prominent national reporter sent me a note that said: Governor, if you hadn't stood against lockdowns, we'd have no proof of just how useless they really have been."
Noem spoke as South Dakota came off its worse month yet during the pandemic. The state has consistently broken records in recent weeks related to the rate of new cases, active cases, hospitalizations and the number of people killed by the virus. . . .
Nice use of anonymous source, there, Governor. You can Read: Gov. Kristi Noem's remarks to lawmakers during COVID-19 special session at the Argus Leader.
At Dakota Free Press, Cory Allen Heidelberger tells readers what he really thinks in Noem Speechifies on Another Planet, Ignores Pandemic at Home:
South Dakota is proving the opposite of what Kristi Noem is saying. A lot of people are alive today because lots of other places had the good sense to lock down . . .
Now Kristi Noem is throwing that achievement away and pretending that pandemic suffering and death are inevitable—again, translate: not her fault!
Active coronavirus cases in South Dakota dropped today by 2%, but hospitalizations rose 4% to a new daily record of 250. Those 250 suffering South Dakotans might take heart from the White House’s maskless exhortation to not fear coronavirus… but none of those 250 South Dakotans have their own private med-evac helicopter, a two-dozen-person in-house medical team, or the best in government-run health care fully financed by the taxpayers.
But quit your griping and gasping, coronavirus patients! Be the example to America that Kristi wills you to be!
There's some disagreement about her take in the traditional media as well. On October 2, the editorial board of the Argus Leader wrote in Editorial: As COVID-19 leadership falters, Sioux Falls needs mask mandate now:
As news broke late Thursday night that President Trump and First Lady Melania Trump had tested positive for COVID-19, the world received another glaring reminder of the serious nature of the pandemic and the importance of basic safety precautions.
Has South Dakota gotten the message? Good question.
We have waited six months for Gov. Kristi Noem to provide leadership during the pandemic by protecting and serving South Dakotans rather than parroting patriotic platitudes. She has surpassed even Trump in undermining, rather than emphasizing, the use of masks despite clear guidance from infectious disease experts that face coverings can reduce the spread of the virus.
Noem, who has been campaigning for Trump and was reportedly at the same Minneapolis fundraiser as the president Wednesday, has become a standard-bearer for those who believe the COVID-19 threat is overblown. She has talked of personal responsibility and the wonders of wide-open spaces while South Dakota once again becomes a national hot spot, with record highs announced Friday in active cases (3,987) and current hospitalizations (220), with total deaths at 237.
On a per capita basis, no state has more people currently hospitalized due to COVID-19 than South Dakota, dashing any hopes that the virus would simply fade away this fall as we donned our “positive pants” and were “working really hard” at social distancing, or at least harder than those in power.
To put it bluntly, the governor is a lost cause on this issue. So who else is going to step up?
. . .Though many citizens are showing responsibility by wearing face coverings when appropriate, many others are not. It doesn’t help that the state’s chief executive has refused to wear a mask in public and has at times questioned their effectiveness. . . .
Florida Politics reports in Kristi Noem, Pam Bondi, Corey Lewandowski to rally MAGA troops in Naples:
A South Dakota Governor who calls lockdowns “useless.” A former Florida Attorney General who defended Donald Trump from impeachment by going after Joe Biden’s family on the Senate floor. A campaign surrogate who retorted to news a girl with Down Syndrome was put in a cage with a “womp womp.”
While President Trump has not yet returned to the campaign trail, a few of his most unapologetic supporters will appear in Naples Thursday to rally support. South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, former AG Pam Bondi and former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski are headlining a Make America Great Again! event scheduled at VFW Post 7721.
Doors for the event open at 1:30 p.m. Thursday, with the trio of notables arriving at 2:30 p.m.
The event comes shortly after Donald Trump’s reelection campaign announced Operation MAGA, a massive deployment of campaign surrogates standing in for the President as he recovers from COVID-19. . . .
As for Noem, the Western Governor become particularly popular among conservatives during the coronavirus response as she’s taken a soft-touch approach as far as lockdowns. Just this week, she defended a resistance to lockdowns in remarks to the South Dakota Legislature, according to the Sioux Falls Argus Leader.
For more on COVID-19 in South Dakota, check out the Map: Where is coronavirus in South Dakota? View data on ages, counties and gender.
Photo: Items in the window of the Center of the Universe Antiques in Summit, South Dakota. Dennis Schulz, owner of the shop, died in Sioux Falls on September 30, from complications of COVID-19. We will miss his kindness and humor. Read his obituary here.
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