South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem Cures* Coronavirus With Personal Responsibility And FREEDOM

*Cure not guaranteed.

Not to put too fine a point on it, South Dakota's Governor Kristi Noem is a loon. She's a crank. A fool. There's no filling in her kolaches, and she's several tater tots short of a hot dish. In short, she's the last person on earth you'd choose to handle a viral pandemic outbreak. Well, make that second to last. 

So it's no surprise that Noem's crackedcrisis management skills netted the Mount Rushmore State one of the largest covid clusters in the country, with upwards of 300 workers at the Smithfield pork processing plant in Sioux Falls sickened with coronavirus. The factory is now shuttered indefinitely, jeopardizing the country's already constricted food supply by taking a reported 18 million servings of meat per day off the market. The Washington Post reports that employees at the 3,700-person plant were given no protective gear and forced to work in close proximity with no opportunity for social distancing. To which their esteemed governor responds that they probably should have taken more personal responsibility.

"The people themselves are primarily responsible for their safety," Noem arglebargled at press conference Monday. "They are the ones that are entrusted with expansive freedoms."

Like the freedom to contract highly contagious diseases for $12 an hour, right Governor Random Ayn Rand Tweet Generator?

Noem, one of a handful of GOP governors who have refused to implement a stay-at-home order, eschews the "herd mentality" of those Democrat leaders who want to dictate the sacred right of individual citizens "to exercise their right to work, to worship and to play. Or to even stay at home."

"It's an exciting day," she said repeatedly, fired up from her earlier conversation with the presidential son-in-law. Because who doesn't get a little weak in the knees discussing a pandemic with a 39-year-old incompetent nitwit who is somehow in charge of America now?

Noem assured the assembled reporters that the spike in cases was "expected" and that South Dakota's trendline was going in the right direction. Which, um, ....

Via JHU COVID tracker  

Those flatlines are where the state ran out of tests , which are anyway being rationed, so the real number of cases is much higher.

States with the highest percent change in confirmed #COVID19 cases over the past 5 days as of April 13, 2020: 1. S… https://t.co/ijHyVBET8z

— US COVID-19 Report (@US COVID-19 Report) 1586827200.0 

Sioux Falls's Republican Mayor Paul TenHaken is begging for help, telling the Post that "A shelter-in-place order is needed now. It is needed today." But Noem is holding firm, because "South Dakota is not New York City." By which we assume she means that South Dakota has about 4,500 hospital beds for the entire state and a population too small to exert any leverage in a competitive bidding process to secure ventilators and PPE to handle an outbreak.

But don't worry, it's not like Governor Noem is just ignoring the problem. She's stockpiling untested medication to pump into every hospital patient, healthcare worker, and senior citizen in South Dakota.

I made direct requests to @POTUS and @VP Pence to supply us with enough hydroxychloroquine so that it could be made… https: //t.co/DTQHFecnMK

— Governor Kristi Noem (@Governor Kristi Noem) 1586795112.0 

Doctors in France and Brazil shut down studies of hydroxychloroquine because, whatever its effect on coronavirus symptoms, the drug poses a major danger to cardiac patients. Meanwhile Heritage Foundation Barbie wants to put that shit in the water in a state where one in five deaths is caused by heart disease. Congratulations, South Dakota, on being offered up as medical research subjects by a governor trying to suck up to the most incompetent president in modern history.

Aaaaaand, it looks like today's numbers are out.

South Dakota coronavirus cases update: 120 new cases for a total of 988. No new deaths reported. Hospitalizations u… https://t.co/7k83zZXkHo

— ArgusLeader911 (@ArgusLeader911) 1586882055.0 

Feel the freedom!

[ WaPo ]

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