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SD Coronavirus Cases Rise 460% Two Months in a Row; Still No Vaccine Push from Noem

At the end of July, Governor Kristi Noem said her fleeting promotion of coronavirus vaccines in April and May had saturated public awareness and that she didn’t to risk people tuning her out by pushing vaccines any more. “You might see more communication from us,” she told AP, “if we start seeing cases dramatically increase.”

Um, Governor?

Benchmark Data Labs, South Dakota Covid-19 Case Statistics, annotated with red line by DFP to compare Sep 2020 and Sep 2021 levels, retrieved 2021.09.06.
Benchmark Data Labs, South Dakota Covid-19 Case Statistics: New Positive Cases, annotated with red line by DFP to compare Sep 2020 and Sep 2021 levels, retrieved 2021.09.06.

One year ago, when we were trying to piece together a safe return to school and cobbling together mask and quarantine and remote learning protocols in the school and wishing Operation Warp Speed would work faster, our peak seven-day moving average for new daily covid-19 cases was 306 on September 3, 2020. When you spoke of your saturation point on July 30, 2021, our seven-day moving average of new daily cases had risen from 18 on June 30 to 101 on July 28, a 460% increase. Our daily moving average hit 570 on September 3, another 460% increase.

A 460% increase seems dramatic to me, especially now that we have a vaccine that could flatten that curve. But I guess since Governor Noem didn’t see a 460% increase as dramatic on July 30, she won’t see that increase as dramatic now, and she will remain silent and deadly on vaccines.

Governor’s Tweets amidst the current coronavirus surge: fireworks, abortion, baseball, pork.

Related Reading: If Governor Noem really loved babies, she’d join doctors in telling pregnant women to get their coronavirus vaccines:

Throughout the last year and a half, Dr. Kimberlee McKay with Avera Medical Group has had to see multiple pregnant patients become severely sick and, in some cases, give birth early because of complications from a COVID-19 diagnosis.

…That’s why doctors are urging pregnant patients to get vaccinated against COVID-19. Dr. Elizabeth Miller is an Ob/Gyn with Sanford Health; she’s also a mom.

“So one of the things that I share with my patients to help them feel confident about getting the vaccine is that I got the vaccine when I was fifteen weeks pregnant with my son,” Miller said. “And it was one of the first times that I felt hopeful in this pandemic, knowing that I was more protected and that my son would be born with protection as well.”

Dr. Miller says 150,000 pregnant people have received the vaccine nationally. She says the vaccine is safe for expecting parents, but it also provides extra safety for the baby.

“And also, when moms get the vaccine in pregnancy, it passes antibodies through the placenta to baby and can help protect babies against COVID when they’re born,” Miller said. “Babies can’t get the vaccine so this is one of the best ways that moms can protect their babies too” [Lauren Soulek, “The Increased Risks of Covid-19 in Pregnancy and Why Doctors Are Urging the Vaccine,” KELO-TV, 2021.09.05].

Love your baby and everybody else’s: get your shots!

23 Comments

  1. Eve Fisher

    Noem will never urge vaccines as long as DeSantis isn’t. They’re in a pissing contest (at least in Noem’s mind), with the hope of the winner taking the White House – or the VP slot.

  2. Donald+Pay

    Noem, of course, is a squish on any subject. She can’t take a principled stand on anything, because she has no principles. Don’t expect anything like consistency from her. She’s just like her hero, Trump (that p*ssy), who shucks and jives through multiple positions, even in one speech. Rather than read information or take counsel from experts, she, like Trump, “hears things” from “people.” It can be the stupidest nonsense imaginable, but she, like Trump, will say something at a rally, and if it connects with the lowest IQ element there, it becomes her “truth.” If it doesn’t connect, well, neither Trump or Noem will ever admit to saying it. It’s just pathetic.

  3. Donald Pay

    Noem, of course, is a squish on any subject. She can’t take a principled stand on anything, because she has no principles. Don’t expect anything like consistency from her. She’s just like her hero, Trump (that p*ssy), who shucks and jives through multiple positions, even in one speech. Rather than read information or take counsel from experts, she, like Trump, “hears things” from “people.” It can be the stupidest nonsense imaginable, but she, like Trump, will say something at a rally, and if it connects with the lowest IQ element there, it becomes her “truth.” If it doesn’t connect, well, neither Trump or Noem will ever admit to saying it. It’s just pathetic.

  4. It’s just a few more dead. Noem has her future to think of.

  5. O

    Maybe Governor Noem believes that health care is a personal choice and that the government has no role mandating health care to individuals. Give the people options and allow them to make their own informed (based only on the best science) decisions. Freedom to choose is the most important value held by conservative South Dakotans.

  6. Porter Lansing

    If an individual chooses to be part of a group then that individual’s personal health care choices are mandated to follow the healthcare choices of the group.

    Otherwise, an individual choosing to be part of a group and knowingly endangering that group is in violation of numerous regulations and must be stopped.

  7. leslie

    U.S. has exceeded 40 million COVID cases since the start of the pandemic.

    One million new cases in 6 days.
    @NBCNews

    KELO, Friday night, after numerously repeating all week “surging SD infections are NOT of the Delta Variant,” reversed course and reported “all of the SD surging infections are of the Delta Variant”.

    More variants are known and expected. Republicans are taking us all down with them in their “death spiral”.

    Life is better w/o DFP. I note in a glance that grdz has yet increased its “comments”. I don’t miss this idiot, or, neal, tim and steve, and the Spearfish dolt. And many others on the right. They have created a cesspool of arrogant disinformation.

    Edit away, Cory.

  8. leslie

    “This is the apogee of Republican Extremism- a captured State & Federal political & Judiciary system willingly destroying their sources of legal power because their control was not absolute.”

  9. ArloBlundt

    well…the partisan politics of the South Dakota Department of Health. who curries favor from the Governor rather than protecting the people of South Dakota, is the greatest scandal of the age.

  10. O

    lesli, I agree with your comment about the Republican Extremism need for absolute control; what makes that worse is the companion need to be diametrically opposed to EVERYTHING “libbies” stand for. Because “libbies” favored vaccinations, the MAGA crowd had to entrench the opposite position to “own the libbies.” Over time, I hope that middle America (political middle, not geographic middle) will see the options are stand with those who make sense, or stand with those who have oppositional defiant disorder. The key will be for the right to keep following the science and reason in policy matters.

    At some point, the golden example of democracy HAS to follow through to its moniker in the US. The minority has to be put in its place by the majority.

  11. Well O, freedom to chose death for others is hardly a constitutional right. I’m OK with choosing death for yourself, but that pesky little mutating virus is waiting in the wings and if you choose not to get vaccinated you are helping it along. There really isn’t a middle of the road on some issues.

  12. grudznick

    Hear hear, Mr. O! grudznick, past president of the Conservatives with Common Sense, is certainly no libbie. However, being #4Science I stand with common sense and urge all you fellows to get vaccinated.

  13. O

    Mark, I agree. Where the whole pandemic discussion jumps the tracks of individual liberty for me is that this is a public health issue — not an individual health issue. I like how you frame that so clearly. That is amplified when those who refuse vaccination perpetuate the virus, giving it a safe haven to allow mutation to make it a threat against even we who choose to follow the science.

  14. Wow. So many experts here. :)

  15. O

    Mr. Dale, I would guess this does seem like a group of experts given the fact-devoid sites you normally occupy.

  16. Loren

    John Dale commenting on “experts?” Pot, meet kettle!

  17. jerry

    Good news for republicans on Invermectin and results. Problem… “There was a significant drop in the sperm counts of the patients after their treatment with ivermectin. For example in a particular patient the sperm count dropped from 125 million cells per ml of sperm before therapy with ivermectin to 105 million per ml after the treatment

    6*[Normal Control Range = 60 – 120 x 10 per ml, see table 1]. There was also a significant reduction in the motility of the cells after the treatment with ivermectin. These reductions were not concurrent, nor where they in proportion to one another. As for the morphology, there was a significant increase in the number of abnormal cells after the treatment with ivermectin *[Normal control Range of normal motility = above 50%, see table 1].”

    Solution: Get a jab

  18. From Science a couple of months back ..

    Some scientists have called it “superhuman immunity” or “bulletproof.” But immunologist Shane Crotty prefers “hybrid immunity.” “Overall, hybrid immunity to SARS-CoV-2 appears to be impressively potent,” Crotty wrote in commentary in Science back in June.

    No matter what you call it, this type of immunity offers much-needed good news in what seems like an endless array of bad news regarding COVID-19. Over the past several months, a series of studies has found that some people mount an extraordinarily powerful immune response against SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes the disease COVID-19. Their bodies produce very high levels of antibodies, but they also make antibodies with great flexibility — likely capable of fighting off the coronavirus variants circulating in the world but also likely effective against variants that may emerge in the future.

    “One could reasonably predict that these people will be quite well protected against most — and perhaps all of — the SARS-CoV-2 variants that we are likely to see in the foreseeable future,” says Paul Bieniasz, a virologist at Rockefeller University who helped lead several of the studies. In a study published online last month, Bieniasz and his colleagues found antibodies in these individuals that can strongly neutralize the six variants of concern tested, including delta and beta, as well as several other viruses related to SARS-CoV-2, including one in bats, two in pangolins and the one that caused the first coronavirus pandemic, SARS-CoV-1. “This is being a bit more speculative, but I would also suspect that they would have some degree of protection against the SARS-like viruses that have yet to infect humans,” Bieniasz says.

  19. M

    Hey Jerry, that is good news, we need a lot less sperm out there. Somebody send John Dale and Kurt Evans as much as they want.

  20. leslie

    “@PaulBieniasz
    Empirically, vaccine reduces infection and disease and has a FAR lower risk of bad outcomes. Everyone will be either vaccinated or infected eventually. If you choose infection over vaccination, then you are making a terrible choice for yourself and others.”

    DALE the fool proceeds with unfettered publication of his curious ANTI VAXX rant, misleading the uninformed to become wary of getting vaccinated. This is deadly. Allowing this public disinformation in the guise of “free speech” is journalistically unethical, but encourages blog clicks.

    Ban the fool.

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