According to the latest CDC coronavirus data, From May 26 through June 1, South Dakota reported just 1.1 deaths from covid-19 per 100,000 population. That’s a lot better than the 13 to 14 per 100K per week we were seeing last November, but it still leaves us among the ten states with the worst current weekly coronavirus death rates (Wisconsin is worst at 2.0 deaths/100K). During that last weekly reporting period, Sioux Falls saw 0.7 deaths per 100K and Rapid City saw 1.4.
Meanwhile, the San Francisco-Oakland-Berkeley metro area saw 0.6 deaths from coronavirus per 100K of its larger (4.7 million) and denser population. Over the entire pandemic so far, the Metro by the Bay has seen 82 deaths per 100K, versus 194 per 100K in Sioux Falls, 163 per 100K in Rapid City, and over 100 per 100K in all nine of South Dakota’s other biggest towns and 228 per 100K across South Dakota.
How did San Francisco between 3,800 to 6,900 lives that would have been lost to coronavirus if they’d had the same death rate as South Dakota? In part, the city employs and listens to more public health expert s:
“The behavior of the people, which can only be legislated so much, tended to comport more with the major public health recommendations, more than anywhere in the country,” says Bob Wachter, who chairs the Department of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). “There was a general consensus that this was serious and virtually no pushback on the kinds of restrictions that made the most sense from a public health standpoint.”
Yellow-and-blue safety warnings are ubiquitous all over town. San Francisco has benefited from a unified political response and a public health department considered one of the best in the nation. “There are many states, frankly, that don’t have the level of expertise that the San Francisco health department has,” says Art Reingold, an epidemiologist at the University of California, Berkeley [Alan Greenblatt, “How San Francisco Brought Its Covid Death Rate Down to Zero,” Governing, 2021.06.02].
San Francisco also has better vaccination rates. In the three weeks that the Pfizer vaccine has been authorized for kids down to age 12, 20.6% of the SFOB’s population age 12–17 has gotten fully vaccinated against coronavirus. In Sioux Falls, only 8.4% of that age group are fully vaccinated; in Rapid City, only 6.4%. Only Vermillion and Yankton have gotten more than 10% of their eligible youth vaccinated. Statewide, we’ve vaccinated only 6.6% of the 12–17 group.
San Francisco has fully vaccinated 68.2% of its adult population; Sioux Falls is at 51.9%, Rapid City at 38.3%, and the whole state at 55.6%. The only subgroup where South Dakotans are beating San Franciscans for vaccination rates are the 65-and-older crowd, who have been terrified by our wanton disregard for their lives into an 84.3% full vaccination rate, the sixth-highest state rate in the nation for that age group; in San Francisco, 79.6% of old folks have gotten fully vaccinated for coronavirus.
But for the most part, it appears smart people and smart public policy make San Francisco more pro-life than South Dakota.
Nicely done, Cory. A little enlightenment goes a long way.
Jim_Jordan (R), who sits on the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis, tells me he has not been vaccinated.
“Look, I think we’re way past this. I think the country is ready to move on and we’re done with this, but you guys just keep wanting to talk about it.” twttr today
Masked in a convenience store w/two grandkids, we held the door for a couple, unmasked Gen X, who looked us up and down and gave us that sheit eating grin that we dupes are starting to kno so well.
Leslie’s Jordan quote from reporter Taylor Popielarz epitomizes the foolish political evasion of science and public responsibility to which Republicans must now resort to keep their failing worldview together. It’s not that I or anyone else in the media just want to keep talking about the coronavirus pandemic. We want to talk about issues that matter, and coronavirus specifically and pandemic response in general still matter very much. Back in June 1865, right after hundreds of thousands of Americans (and traitors) had died in the worst military conflict in this nation’s history, reporters and authors and scholars didn’t all stop writing about the Civil War. They wanted and needed to sort out the conflict and help us figure out what to do next and how to avoid letting such a thing happen again. Likewise the pandemic: people are still getting sick and dying. Too many South Dakotans still haven’t done the one very simple and cost-free action they can take to snuff out this virus and protect the lives of their neighbors. And the economy still has not reset itself toward safe prosperity.
I’m tired of the pandemic. I wish we could move on. But we are not way past one of the defining disasters of this century.
I guess if my absolute disregard for American lives cost 600k plus deaths, I’d want to move on and have everyone forget as soon as possible. But after drumpf’s hoax and all his co-conspirators the next stop would be the big lie about the election, then the Jan 6th attempted coup that magats can’t stop lying about.
Jordan is jumping from one frying pan into another before hitting the fire. Hope he, and all his magat buds, get toasted to a fare thee well.