In a packed room in Orlando, Florida, South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem (R) spoke about her state’s COVID-19 response to the 2021 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), a response that was strikingly different. most other states.
During the course of the pandemic, South Dakota never implemented a mandatory mask requirement across the state, nor did it close businesses and churches. Schools were reopened, and the state still managed to host its Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in August 2020, despite the summer outbreak COVID-19.
Keeping the CPAC’s theme of defending the rights of states beyond the reach of the federal government, Noem explained that his decisions came from “arbitrary restrictions” that were not suited to each state and that mitigating the spread would harm the state’s economy.
As Noem claims that his state has the lowest unemployment rate in the country, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that it was around 3% in December 2020 – well below the US unemployment rate of 6.3. She credits this in large part to the fact that she did not close deals during the pandemic.
“COVID did not crush the economy,” she said. “The government crushed the economy.”
In making these decisions, Noem said he challenged the recommendations of the White House Coronavirus Task Force’s chief advisor, Anthony Fauci.
Fauci has consistently advocated the use of facial masks and social distance to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 as vaccines become more widely distributed.
“Now, Dr. Fauci,” Noem started, “he said to me on my worst day, I would have 10,000 patients in the hospital. On our worst day, we had just over 600. ”
The CPAC crowd started to applaud, to which Noem continued to say “Dr. Fauci is very wrong. “
This caused a standing ovation.
Speaking for CBS News on Sunday, Fauci was quick to offer a reply, saying Noem’s comments were “unhappy” and “did not help much”.
He further said that any pause observed in new cases of COVID-19 has given rise to future outbreaks.
“Sometimes you think things are going well and take a look at the numbers,” he continued. “They don’t lie.”
Fauci agrees that the pandemic has seen different scenarios on a case-by-case basis as the virus spreads across multiple regions, but he warns of new variants that are spreading more efficiently and could result in a more serious and substantial outbreak.
“I’m sure you could get a standing ovation saying I’m wrong, but … if you look at the scientific facts and follow what we need to do, how these cases are falling, what we don’t do is what they want … start to stagnate at a level that will give us a lot of problems ”, he observed.
South Dakota current situation of COVID-19 shows the stagnant and relatively low case count from March to August 2020 that Noem referred to, but it also reveals an impressive outbreak that occurred during the winter months of 2020 and 2021.
In addition, aggregate data reveals that South Dakota maintains the second tallest COVID-19 infection rate per capita, with about 12,609 cases per 100,000 people.
“We don’t want to continue to prevent people from doing what they want, but we are going to get down to a good level, we are going to vaccinate a lot more people and then you can withdraw these types of public health measures,” said Fauci.
Fauci acknowledged that maintaining locks and closings is difficult, but the COVID-19 spread needs to be substantially reduced before a sustained reopening can occur.
“We haven’t won yet,” he concluded.
at the moment, South Dakota has 1,933 active cases of COVID-19 and saw more than 99,000 confirmed cases during the pandemic.