South Dakota gripped by pandemic amid Kristi Noem's no-mask approach
Isolating herself from family after a Covid-19 diagnosis on the Rosebud Sioux Reservation in South Dakota, grandmother Cheryl Angel had few options for safe shelter and ended up far afield traipsing from one lonely hotel room to another.
“Our tribe didn’t have anything set up, and if it weren’t for my relatives, I would have died in there,” she said.
Relatives made two-hour drives to leave breakfast and supper outside her impromptu isolation ward, while inside she followed instructions to use a steroid inhaler four times a day and learned to inject herself with an epinephrine medication when she felt faint.
She vowed that if she survived the deadly disease, she would do all she could to help others receive better treatment, as South Dakota fell further into the grip of the coronavirus pandemic.
By the time her two sons caught coronavirus this fall, Angel had recovered and become involved in a grassroots community encampment taking care of homeless fellow Native Americans on Sioux land on the outskirts ofRapid City, in the west of the state
Physician Nancy Babbitt, who agreed to supervise training for coronavirus testing at the settlement, Camp Mniluzahan, lamented the heightened risks such vulnerable residents are facing amid state governor Kristi Noem’s determinedly hands-off pandemic policy – including being the only state without a mask mandate to curb infection.
“My experience dealing with Covid-19 in South Dakota is one of failed leadership. Our governor has made it clear it’s up to the people, so we have to come up with creative ideas to help stop the spread,” Babbitt said.
She added that for vulnerable populations, whether in South Dakota or anywhere: “Safe quarantine is a luxury.”
Nevertheless, Noem encouraged crowds to South Dakota’s beautiful Black Hills to see Donald Trump when the president attended a fireworks display at Mount Rushmore in July, and to attend the Sturgis motorcycle rally in August, and scoffed at science-driven precautions.
Jodi Doering, an emergency room nurse in Woonsocket, sees the fall-out from this kind of denial.
“As I’m on my couch with my dog, I can’t help but think of the Covid patients … the ones that stick out are those who still don’t believe the virus is real,” she tweeted.
She described patients shouting “that president-elect Joe Biden was ‘going to ruin the USA’. All while gasping for breath”.
“They call you names and ask why you have to wear all that ‘ stuff’, because they don’t have Covid.” she said, referring to the personal protective equipment front line healthcare workers wear.
“They stop yelling at you when they get intubated,” she added.
Her tweets have attracted some backlash, including from healthcare workers who said they had not experienced such things.
After the motorcycle rally, Noem further refused to cancel the South Dakota state fair in September, as she promoted tourism in the state and enthusiastically embraced presidential exhortations to states to “open up” for business.
South Dakota has an alarming positivity rate of almost 60% – nearly six out of 10 people who take a Covid test are infected – second only in the US to neighboring Wyoming.
More than 66,000 South Dakotans have contracted the disease and at least 644 have died, a number likely to rise as hospitals reach breaking point.
The South Dakota Medical Association has issued a statement in support of a mask mandate. The state’s largest city of Sioux Falls put one into effect, and the second largest, Rapid City, is awaiting a final council vote.
With USA Today newspaper headlines reporting earlier this month that South and North Dakota are in a situation “as bad as it gets anywhere in the world for Covid-19”, Noem held her first pandemic media availability in three months, firing back: “That is absolutely false” and citing different data sources.
The laissez faire approach all but ordains that the most vulnerable South Dakotans, who may live in remote towns scattered across the state’s nine tribal reservations, in small rural enclaves or the cities, will have to figure out their own ways of coping.
Those with low-income, lacking transportation and experiencing preexisting health conditions all too easily find themselves in life-or-death situations.
When tribal governments set up Covid-19 checkpoints early in 2020 on highways connecting reservation jurisdictions with state lands, to try to curb infections, Noem threatened their sovereignty with legal action, seeking Trump’s back-up.
The Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, arguing the checkpoints were needed because reservations lack medical facilities and equipment to handle a large virus outbreak, especially stemming from lax official protocols, sued Trump for colluding with Noem to undermine tribal authority.
When Angel, who is Sicangu Lakota, contracted Covid-19, she wouldn’t stay at her rustic Rosebud home because two household members had pre-existing health conditions.
“Access to running water and private bathroom facilities is absolutely necessary to recover and to contain Covid-19 from spreading,” she told the Guardian.
“The tribe didn’t have a safe or adequate quarantine area able to provide Covid-19 support” so, she added “I left the reservation.”
She alternately stayed in Valentine, Nebraska, and Kadoka, South Dakota, as room bookings permitted.
“At one point, I was so weak I could barely walk,” she said.
She added: “I wouldn’t have survived on the reservation. Like my son, I probably would have been flown out. And who knows of I’d have survived that.”
Her younger son drove his older brother to the Rosebud emergency room just in time for a life-saving flight to a Sioux Falls hospital.
While in isolation, she said: “My prayer was that, if I ever survive this, I’m not going to let anybody else be alone in a hotel room.”
Later, feeding the fire at Camp Mniluzahan as she tended to residents’ various needs, Angel reflected: “This is what I envisioned when I was sick, alone, near death and couldn’t breathe.”
Babbitt added: “When I saw what was happening at the camp, it filled my heart – to see people making a difference.”