Sat, November 14, 2020, 10:08 AM EST
The Dakotas are 'as bad as it gets anywhere in the world' for COVID-19
South Dakota welcomed hundreds of thousands of visitors to a
massive motorcycle rally this summer,
declined to cancel the state fair and still doesn't require masks. Now
its hospitals are filling up and the state's current COVID-19 death rate is among the worst in the world.
The situation is similarly dire in North Dakota, with the state's governor recently moving to allow
health care workers who have tested positive for COVID-19 to continue working if they don't show symptoms. It's a
controversial policy recommended
by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in a crisis situation where hospitals are short-staffed.
And now — after months of resisting a statewide mask mandate — North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum changed course late Friday, ordering masks to be worn statewide and imposing several business restrictions.
He had avoided requiring masks and refused to enforce limits on social gatherings and business occupancies until late Friday.
“Our situation has changed, and we must change with it,” Burgum said in a video message posted at 10 p.m. Friday. Doctors and nurses “need our help, and they need it now,” he said.
In conservative regions like the Dakotas and elsewhere in the world, it's common to see push back like an “allergic reaction to being told what to do,” said Taylor,
author of "The Psychology of Pandemics".
How widespread is COVID-19 across North and South Dakota?
The current rates of infection and death in South Dakota and previously restriction-free North Dakota are what Dr. Ali Mokdad would expect to see in a
war-torn nation — not here. “
How could we allow this in the United States to happen? This is unacceptable by any standards.”
North Dakota's COVID-19 death rates in the past week are similar to the hardest hit countries in the world right now — Belgium, Czech Republic and Slovenia —
according to Saturday New York Times data. That data also places South Dakota's recent per capita deaths among the
world's highest rates.
And there's currently nowhere in the U.S. where COVID-19 deaths are more common than in the Dakotas, according to data published by
The COVID Tracking Project.
It's a situation “as bad as it gets anywhere in the world," Dr. William Haseltine told USA TODAY.
How did it get so bad?
Mokdad pointed to a number of factors that have made both North and South Dakota vulnerable to the virus' spread. He cited higher rates of preexisting conditions and economic inequality in the region, in addition to health care that lags behind the U.S. standard.
But the
lack of regulation from the states' leaders is an ongoing and fixable problem, Mokdad said.
Haseltine, president of ACCESS Health International and author of
My Lifelong Fight Against Disease, blamed politicians — especially South Dakota Republican Gov. Kristi Noem — for
ignoring public health measures that have been successfully used to curb the spread of the virus elsewhere in the world.
Noem has cast doubt on whether wearing masks in public is effective, saying that she’ll leave it up to the people to decide. She has said the virus can’t be stopped.
Noem and Burgum have touted ideals of limited government, with Noem continuing to express concern about
how decisive state action could be an example of a government overreach.
But Haseltine framed public health actions another way: Not enacting them is like standing in the way of an ambulance — the ambulance being proven health measures like mask mandates and social gathering restrictions.
Even worse, encouraging large scale events in a pandemic as South Dakota has done is equivalent to manslaughter, Haseltine said.
Gov. Kristi Noem won't comply with Biden face mask mandate: He 'doesn't have the authority'
South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem
(The Washington Post / Getty Images)
