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2020-

2020-11-28 b
THE COVID-CON II
"What’s driving the anti-Dakotas vendetta is that the mainstream media overwhelmingly support authoritarian measures and governors of both states have resisted them. "

The Media’s Covid War on the Dakotas

"I cry and weep for South Dakota… as both a former childhood resident and as an epidemiologist.” So tweeted a member of the left-wing Federation of American Scientists (FAS) referring to the impact of Covid-19. Meanwhile a HuffPost headline, coincidentally using FAS as its source, declared “North Dakota Hits Highest COVID-19 Mortality Rate in The World.” So should we cry for it, too? Or maybe cry for Argentina, despite the plea of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Evita Peron?

No, cry for the mainstream media and its need to wage war against any jurisdiction without authoritarian Covid-19 measures, be it Sweden or the Dakotas.

The Dakotas do rank first and second in the Worldometer database for cases per capita going all the way back to March. But that tells us nothing about what’s happening now. If we calculate active cases per population, we see 2.1% for South Dakota and 1.3% for North Dakota. Nationally the rate is 1.4%. For New York, it’s a stunning 7.4%.

But trend lines are even more important. Over the last two weeks the highest growth according to Johns Hopkins University has been in New Mexico, Arizona, Virginia, California and Louisiana. New Mexico’s rate is up over 100%, while new cases for the Dakotas have been dropping.

That said, there’s simply no way to make straight comparisons between states as if you were comparing lab rodents in a controlled study. Each state has unique characteristics. Thus one characteristic favoring the Dakotas regarding Covid-19 is lower population density. (Nobody bunches together on the Fargo subway…)

Among those hurting include that North Dakota is the coldest state in the Lower 48 (“You betcha!) and South Dakota isn’t far behind. That means such things as spending more time inside in long-term close proximity to other people and less Vitamin D absorption (tied to both higher risk of contracting and dying from the disease). And, of course, the Dakotas don’t just get very cold; they get cold earlier. So you would expect their seasonal increase to come earlier than most of the country, just as we’ve seen.

Mind, so far most of this has addressed infections and not deaths. There’s not a direct connection and one factor that may be pumping up apparent North Dakota deaths is that under the “CARES Act” states are given special reimbursements for Medicare patients who are declared to have Covid-19. (Which, by the way, doesn’t even require a positive test. If a doctor says it’s coronavirus, that’s good enough.) As it happens, the latest data I can find shows North Dakota was paid the nation’s highest bonus at a whopping $339,000 per patient. By comparison, New York state was getting a miserly $12,000. As the expression goes, “You get what you pay for!”

Another possible factor: North Dakota has one of the highest Native American populations in the country. And sadly, those people are plagued by the comorbidities associated with coronavirus such as obesity and diabetes. As such, they suffer about twice the rate of Covid-19 as the general U.S. population. (read more)

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