The “third wave” of the COVID-19 threatens to be worse than the first two combined. In Germany, over-confidence that the virus was “under control” has been undermined by the fact that the total number of cases in the country has tripled in the past two months, and total deaths have doubled with winter only just beginning. Help is on the way with the various vaccines starting to go “online,” but it is too late to make much of a dent in the numbers for the next few months.
Reports from some other countries are sketchy to say the least. Six weeks ago India was on pace to pass the U.S. in total cases, just one million fewer by mid-October; but now the U.S. is reporting 5 million more cases. It is believed that India actually has as much as 10 times the number of cases it is “officially” reporting, and the WHO has criticized officials there for greatly reducing the amount of testing over the past two months. Of course at least India is reporting something. Unlike every other country, China apparently experienced no second or third waves of the virus; since April it has reported only a few thousand new cases, since May no new deaths, which of course is impossible to believe. Meanwhile, North Korea has not provided any numbers at all, but reports indicate that its fearless leader has been behaving with irrational fear of the virus—closing the border with North Korea’s only real “friend,” China, and ordering the execution of people for not acting “responsibly.”
Acting “responsibly” has not been a hallmark of Trump administration’s response to the pandemic. Since Trump believed that the economy was his ace in the hole for voters who were not hate-filled bigots, he seemed to hope that a “magic bullet” would “kill” the virus, like “warm weather,” Kenneth Copeland’s mighty breath, or now, a vaccine. The U.S. is already well past the 240,000 death upper limit originally speculated, and it is believed (or hoped) that the virus death count will “top off” at 400,000 by March.
Texas currently has more virus cases than any other state, and at its current rate will likely pass New York for the most total deaths at some point. It was the state’s lieutenant governor, Dan Patrick, who urged older citizens to take the bullet so that the economy could stay “alive,” telling Tucker Carlson “Let’s be smart about it and those of us who are 70-plus, we’ll take care of ourselves. But don’t sacrifice the country, don’t do that, don’t ruin this great America.” But it turned out that it wasn’t old white people who took the bullet for Texas. NBC News reported last month that
Latinos have been disproportionately affected by the health and economic consequences of the pandemic, including experiencing a disproportionately high percentage of COVID-19 deaths, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Latinos are three times more likely to become infected with the virus and nearly five times more likely to be hospitalized than non-Hispanic whites.
The Texas Tribune reported that the “Harris County medical examiner data shows that more than two-thirds of those who've died at home from confirmed coronavirus infections have been Hispanic” and that “Hispanic residents are more likely to work in service jobs or live in multigenerational households that make social distancing difficult. They are less likely to have health insurance.” The Tribune noted that Texas is also “the largest state in the nation that refused to expand health insurance for low-income residents under the Affordable Care Act, and it is home to a rapidly growing Latino population. Nearly a third of adults under 65 in Texas lack health insurance, the worst uninsured rate in the country, and more than 60% of those without health insurance in the state are Hispanic.”
The COVID-19 is thus “amplifying the existing inequalities of a health care infrastructure that is faulty by design,” and at public hospitals, “the medical staff have run out of ICU space and key drugs needed to treat COVID-19, leaving many patients to linger in emergency room beds for days before being transferred to hospitals outside the city.”
But what about states like North and South Dakota, which outside their Native American populations are virtually lily-white? Through the first two “waves,” these two states seemingly have bucked the trend, keeping their states “open” and seemingly getting away with it. But no more. The “third wave” has hit those two states with a vengeance; they are now numbers one and two for cases per one million of the population, and in the top-ten in deaths per one million, and climbing. South Dakota has passed the 1,000 deaths mark from only a few hundred; according to Newsweek,
South Dakota saw a 47 percent increase in deaths over the past two weeks, remaining consistent with the data from two weeks prior, which came to a 46 percent increase. It currently has 112 COVID-19 deaths per 100,000 people—ninth in the nation—and the daily average deaths in the state over the past week was 18 percent, according to data compiled by The New York Times. South Dakota also has the highest rate of hospitalizations per capita in the nation—with Indiana in second place—based on data from the COVID Tracking Project. The state's 41 percent testing positivity rate is also one of the nation's highest, according to Johns Hopkins University.
Although the governors of both states initially soft-pedaled their responses to the pandemic, North Dakota’s governor has decided to listen to the pleas of the state’s health care professionals, while in the South, the governor remains determined to be the “darling” of the far-right and eyeing to take on Trump’s mantle in 2024. USA Today reported that “South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem's office said she has no intention of using state resources to enforce any federal COVID-19 orders that might come from a Biden administration,” while “the Republican governor of North Dakota, Doug Burgum, mandated face masks in public after increased pressure from doctors, nurses and other health care professionals to require face coverings.”
The lack of preparedness—or worse, wholesale denial that COVID-19 is a problem at all—has frustrated governors from neighboring states who are trying to control the spread of the virus. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz was critical of Noem for permitting the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally this past summer, with an estimated 360,00 to 460,000 in attendance; images from the rally showed almost no one social-distancing or wearing masks. In September, Noem also permitted another super-spreader event, this time the State Fair.
Now, a reasonable person might conclude that the two Dakotas are in their present state of COVID because they allowed such events to go forward despite the warnings; you don’t have to be a “rocket scientist” or “brain surgeon” to figure that one out. But in the case of the powers-that-be in South Dakota, even common sense is lacking. According to the USA Today, Noem has shown “steadfast resistance to restrictive measures aimed at slowing the spread of the virus. She has discouraged schools from requiring masks, instead promoting hand-washing as the best way to prevent infections, and railed against an ‘elite class of so-called experts’ whose opinions impact individuals' liberties.” Noem, of course, showed her ignorance of facts in insisting that it is much more likely that virus will be caught from surfaces, rather than the more usual mode of inhalation. What we see, of course, is that some people just don’t like wearing masks--and now we see the results of that failure to do such a simple thing.
After Joe Biden tweeted that “help is on the way,” Noem once more displayed her decided deficit of humanity by quoting Ronald Reagan’s "the nine most terrifying words in the English language"--I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.” Actually, the only people for whom those words are “terrifying” are those who think they are going to be “forced” to do the “helping.” I suppose that people have the “liberty” to get sick and/or die, and Noem can help them along with that. But do people have the “liberty” to cause other people to get sick and/or die? Isn’t there laws against that? And talk about inhuman. "Some have said that my refusal to mandate masks is a reason why our cases are rising here in South Dakota, and that is not true," Noem claims. "I've consistently said people that want to wear masks should wear masks and people who don't should not be shamed because they choose not to.”
So how does Noem “explain” the skyrocketing rise in virus cases and deaths in her state? Well, she--like Trump--blames it on “more testing.” Nearly one-in-ten people in South Dakota have tested positive for the virus so far, and there are triple the number of active cases than in North Dakota, which now has a mask mandate. Noem also claims that the U.S.’ Surgeon General, Dr. Jerome Adams, a Trump appointee, has made a statement assuring her that Republican boondock states like hers need not concern themselves with inconvenient measures.
In a recent interview with NPR’s Michel Martin, Adams--who has been mostly invisible during the pandemic despite sitting on Trump’s COVID “task force”--appeared to take offense when Martin observed that “Yesterday, our colleague Ailsa Chang spoke with Dr. Atul Gawande. He is a member of President-elect Biden's COVID-19 advisory group. And he says the Trump administration has not been cooperating and sharing key information about the pandemic response. How do you respond to that?”
Like a good Trump sycophant afraid for his job, Adams sidestepped the question, but Martin insisted that he explain why the Trump “task force” is refusing to share information with the incoming Biden task force. Adams claimed that “we are sharing information with everyone. There is no information that we have that we don't share with the American public in general and that is not available to the Biden task force.” Of course what Adams didn’t want to admit is that Trump is refusing to allow such meetings, and that there is information that the Trump “task force” doesn’t want to share--like what they are not doing to stop the spread of the virus.
The Hill noted that Noem claimed that the sudden, massive rise in cases and deaths was “natural” and “expected”--both rather pathetic lies. Noem also asserted that it was less important to her that people became ill or died from the virus than if there was enough hospital beds to go around. Her spokesperson was quoted "As Governor Noem has always said, we can't stop the virus from spreading. We can, however, ensure that we have the capacity to take care of those who get seriously ill, and we remain well within our capability to care for these individuals."
But not all of them; over a 1,000 and counting have died, which for a state with as small a population as South Dakota is a very significant number. It is simply mind-numbing how anyone can be so astoundingly lapsing in their responsibility to show leadership in a time of crisis for no other reason save that it is not “popular.” Leaders are supposed to “lead,” not follow the mindless mob.
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