Darwin Was Right

 

An example of science deniers paying the price in spades, courtesy WaPo 12/9/2020, minor edits for concise reading

Note: While reading the following, Consider that this is a wide majority conservative Republican town/county/state paying the price for believing/trusting their waste of skin President,

‘God be with us’

Covid-19 becomes personal in a South Dakota town as neighbors die and the town debates a mask mandate.

        In a state where the Republican governor, Kristi L. Noem, has defied calls for a statewide mask mandate even as cases hit record levels, many in this rural community an hour west of Sioux Falls ignored the virus for months, not bothering with masks or social distancing. Restaurants were packed. Big weddings and funerals went on as planned.

        Then people started dying. The wife of the former bank president. A state legislator. The guy whose family has owned the bike shop since 1959. Then Buck Timmins, a mild-spoken 72-year-old who had worked with hundreds of local kids during six decades as a Little League and high school coach and referee. Kevin McCardle, the city council president had been tracking cases while denying any concern

        The daily tally of coronavirus cases in Davison County since March”. The growth which had been so carefully recorded  had exploded in recent weeks, with 359 cases Oct. 1 to 1,912 that morning, a 433 percent increase. Locally, 10 people had died in less than seven weeks. South Dakota now has the largest increase in deaths per capita in the nation, according to Washington Post data from Dec. 8.

        The positivity rate at two local testing sites — a key indicator of the virus’s hold on a community — was 33 percent at the beginning of November and would soar to 49 percent near the end of the month, according to Avera Queen of Peace Hospital in Mitchell.

                Queen of Peace Hospital, which only has eight ICU beds, became overwhelmed and sometimes had to turn patients away, opening up a second covid-19 wing Nov. 8 that filled quickly. Doctors warned of a 50 to 100 percent increase in hospitalizations in the weeks to come. “GOD BE WITH US,” the pandemic-inspired sign outside a feed store read.

        McCardle said he found the numbers as alarming as the public health officials did. He is a 57-year-old camper salesman whose biggest worry as council president before the coronavirus was cleaning up algae in the town lake.

        But now McCardle and others on the council, rattled by Timmins’s death, listened attentively to conservative Republican Susan Tjarks’s proposal, sitting at socially spaced tables on the auditorium’s basketball court in front of murals depicting their hardy pioneer ancestors. The draft ordinance would require masks in public buildings and businesses, with a possible fine of up to $500 and 30 days in jail.

Tjarks, who owns a drapery company called Gotcha Covered, is a conservative Republican. But she became convinced the city had to act as deaths began tearing a deep hole in the community’s civic heart.

        “What we have been doing isn’t working,” she told the city council. “I don’t want to lose any more friends. I don’t want to lose any more neighbors. We have to do what we need to do to step up and prevent these cases from rising.”

        So many town leaders have died in such a short time that the impact has been profound, Tjarks said. Who will fill Timmins’s shoes as a mentor for young referees in the state high school athletic association? Who will raise money for the veteran’s park and the rodeo stampede now that state legislator Lance Carson is gone? There would be smaller absences too: her neighbor, John, now missing from the morning group at the doughnut shop.

        Throughout the autumn, towns all over the Midwest in conservative states where Republican governors have avoided mask mandates have tried to pass their own restrictions, often prompting virulent community debate. The town of Huron, S.D., just up the road passed one, as did Washington, Mo. In Muskogee, Okla., the city council finally passed a mandate after several tries; one of its pro-mask members had even wheeled in a casket as a prop.

        During the public comment section in Mitchell, a handful of anti-maskers spoke, alleging that masks don’t work and that the measure was an overreach that would violate their civil rights. Local doctors and nurses overrun by covid-19 patients pleaded for help. “Every single day, I come to work and have more and more positive covids,” said Diane Kenkel, a nurse practitioner who runs a small independent health clinic in town. “The stress on the hospital is very real. It’s really scary as a provider to come to work and have very ill people and know there might not be a hospital bed for you.”

        Ultimately, the Mitchell City Council passed the draft measure unanimously Nov. 16. But Mayor Bob Everson — one of the mask-doubters — still had to issue an executive order to put it in place. And the draft had to survive what was expected to be contentious public hearing and final vote the following week.

        My Note: This is the legacy of Donald J. Trump. These folks, conservative or not, were lulled into what Admiral Hyman J. Rickover used to call a “false sense of security” by an ignorant narcissist who touted his “approval ratings” while hundreds of thousands of equally ignorant citizens died. These folks ignored real medical professionals and the daily tally of deaths and new cases which were as close as the Johns Hopkins website. Somewhere, if one believes in that sort of nonsense, Charles Darwin is smiling and thinking, “Told ya!”