South Dakota's GOP Governor Will Rely On 'Common Sense' And Leave State Open

By Frances Langum — April 17, 2020

The deaths and disease at a Smithfield pork processing plant has huge implications for the food supply chain,

Reasons SD will die in droves are as follows:
1) There is the largest single outbreak of COVID-19 in the World linked to a pork plant there.

2) At this moment SD still does NOT have a stay-at-home order bc their Gov doesn't feel necessary @govkristinoem

3) Little testing

/2 pic.twitter.com/idzf4n2bv3

— rheuminate (@londyloo) April 15, 2020

worker protection,

When workers began to get sick in mid-March Smithfield installed some hand sanitizer stations (seriously).

Workers demanded PPE. They were given shower caps to wear around their faces instead of masks.

Then more started getting sick.

Workers were offered $500 to stay.

5/ pic.twitter.com/NrGRKrgH8Y

— rheuminate (@londyloo) April 15, 2020

and rural response to Coronavirus.

The hospitals are NOT prepared to handle this.
They do NOT test enough people. They acquired 15 Aetna Covid-19 testing units for the ENTIRE state of SD.

To put this in perspective: one NJ hospital has more Aetna testing units than the entire state of SD.

12/

— rheuminate (@londyloo) April 15, 2020

Do go read the whole twitter thread from South Dakotan @londyloo here.

And South Dakota's Republican Governor is using words like "freedom" and "liberty" on the Laura Ingraham Show, asserting that the plant was "critical infrastructure" and would have remained open anyway under a stay in place order.

GOV. KRISTI NOEM: We’ve got one issue in a pork processing plant in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, but outside of that, two-thirds of our state has no cases or one case in an entire county. So we are doing very well as a state. We are addressing the one hot spot that we do have and aggressively testing in that area, but what you talked about, Laura, is exactly right. We should be tracking who’s in the hospital, what the death rate is and South Dakotans are doing a fantastic job following my recommendations and we’ve been able to keep our businesses open and allow people to take on some personal responsibility.

...What I’ve seen across the country is so many people give up their liberties for just a little bit of security, and they don’t have to do that. If a leader will take too much power in a time of crisis, that is how we lose our country. So I felt like I’ve had to use every single opportunity to talk about why we slow things down, we make decisions based on science and facts and make sure that we’re not letting emotion grab a hold of the situation.

Approximately 600 employees and 135 close contacts of employees have tested positive for the coronavirus at the Smithfield Foods plant.

And Kristi Noem said nothing about the shower caps the plant pretends are PPE.

And Laura Ingraham didn't ask her.

Discussion

We welcome relevant, respectful comments. Any comments that are sexist or in any other way deemed hateful by our staff will be deleted and constitute grounds for a ban from posting on the site. Please refer to our Terms of Service for information on our posting policy.

Latest