Donald Trump, a central adversary for many Americans, is out of office at last. The calm, as boring as it may be, feels good.
But even with a new and decidedly better President in office, the nation will not have an easy time of it. The bumpy COVID-19 vaccine rollout in the Midwest provides a perfect case in point.
His mismanagement of the COVID-19 pandemic, including the vaccine rollout, has left us to fight among ourselves.
Somehow, against all odds, South Dakota is becoming the regional example to follow when it comes to vaccine distribution. This is a huge surprise, given the way the state’s Republican governor, Kristi Noem, has repeatedly downplayed the threat posed by the virus—especially for South Dakota’s most vulnerable residents.
When the coronavirus rampaged through a large meatpacking plant near Sioux Falls in the spring of 2020, for example, Noem implied that it was the workers’ fault, because they tend to live together or near one another and were thus spreading it themselves.
Creative Commons
President Joe Biden receiving the second COVID-19 vaccine.
Her rhetoric “created a foundation for blaming virus outbreaks on the meatpackers’ home lives instead of conditions at plants,” a local news outlet observed, before noting that many of the workers had been given neither protective gear nor other virus mitigation support.
Noem’s approach to the virus epitomizes much of the divide taking place in U.S. politics, as she has positioned herself as a 2024 Republican presidential contender who prioritizes “people’s freedoms and liberties” above all else, according to a recent Washington Examiner report.
It is this sentiment—that we are all free to do whatever we’d like, or believe in whatever facts we choose—that helped fuel the January 6 insurrection and continues to pose a threat to both the Republican party and the United States, as Peter Wehner pointed out so clearly in The Atlantic.
It would be impossible to ascribe any clear political ideology to Trump, but he and Noem do seem to favor a hands-off, libertarian approach to governing, in which each of us is left to fend for ourselves over any notion of the common good.
How interesting, then, that South Dakota’s current vaccine success story is apparently due in large part to a centralized distribution model. As noted by National Public Radio host Ailsa Chang recently, the state has gone from being a national leader in the number of per-capita COVID-19 cases to being at the forefront of vaccinating residents.
In an interview with Chang, South Dakota physician Shankar Kurra called the situation “quite remarkable,” and attributed it to the presence of a centralized distribution network that is being helped along by fast, “flexible, and agile” leadership.
Noem’s name did not come up in the interview. Instead, Dr. Kurra expresses “immense relief and gratitude to the scientists, to the researchers” who are making it all happen.
This is good news for the citizens of South Dakota, including the meatpackers who obviously cannot work from home, or the state’s Native American residents, who have died from COVID-19 in disproportionately high numbers.
If Noem does become a Republican presidential candidate in 2024, it doesn’t seem too far-fetched to imagine that she will somehow take credit for the vaccine rollout in South Dakota, even though she has thus far refused to implement any cohesive virus-mitigation strategies.
This makes her an easy target for criticism, especially given her apparent adoration of Trump. But in Minnesota, we have COVID-19 complexities of our own to contend with, even with Democratic Governor Tim Walz in office.
Recently, Walz allowed elementary schools in the state to reopen, no matter what the COVID-19 case numbers are in their communities. This has caused local teachers unions, including those in Minneapolis and St. Paul, to object, citing the need for school staffers to be vaccinated before returning to the classroom.
In this way, as in other states, vaccine distribution in Minnesota has become politicized. There are not enough doses to go around, perhaps simply because the state’s population of more than five million is far greater than South Dakota’s, which hovers just below one million.
Or perhaps it is because of Trump’s legacy. His mismanagement of the COVID-19 pandemic, including the vaccine rollout, has left us to fight among ourselves.
Teachers in Minnesota are being pitted against parents desperate to have their young children back in school, for example, while the state’s elderly residents either have to wait to get vaccinated or win an online lottery to get their shot sooner.
All of this is happening as Minnesota officials have identified the nation’s first case of a new and highly contagious Brazilian strain of COVID-19, reminding us that we still have many uncertain days ahead of us.
We can’t heal, or expect unity, “without truth,” as Wehner wrote in his op-ed for The Atlantic, published just one day after insurgents stormed the U.S. Capitol. We may never get truth from Trump or his most ardent supporters, like Noem, but we can’t dwell on it for too long—we have some vaccines to administer.