Fox continues its habit of promoting the most irresponsible governors in the United States when it comes to their handling of the pandemic, and helping them to lie about the consequences of their actions. On Friday, one of those governors, South Dakota's Kristi Noem, who happily promoted last year's super-spreader event at Sturgis, was back at it again, defending her state for holding the event this year. The same governor, remember, who was more than happy to allow the virus to run like wildfire through the meatpacking plants in her state (and then blame the workers for it instead of the plants.)
Laura Ingraham started things off attacking President Obama's birthday party, Dr. Fauci and MSNBC's Joy Reid for their criticisms of the event last year, and calling claims that Sturgis was a super-spreader "bogus." Ingraham also called Sturgis an "outdoor motorcycle rally," ignoring the fact that it's not just outdoors, and people there were also crowding restaurants and bars and jam packed at concert venues.
Ingraham asked Noem to respond to Reid's charge that Republicans have "chosen to be on the side of death" in the name of "freedom," and Noem responded by repeating Ingraham's attack on Democrats over the issue of abortion, or, as our friend Tengrain put it, "How to defend the indefensible Sturgis Biker Rally by likely 2024 Goat Rodeo Contender Kristi Noem."
After Ingraham followed up by asking Noem about the number of COVID deaths in her state and the number of people who may have some natural immunity (one study shows as many as 31 percent of her state may have already been infected), Noem proceeded to make the very dubious assertion that only 125 COVID cases resulted from the 2020 rally, and continuing to attack Fauci.
This year we're taking precautions. People can get tested if they want to. We've got medical help available, if people would like it. We are conducting this in a way that certainly protects people's freedoms.
It's been a great event, and what Dr. Fauci is doing by constantly targeting the Sturgis bike rally, by constantly focusing on South Dakota and ignoring liberals who gather every single day and their hypocrisy is just wrong. I think it's unfortunate he is a building distrust into his profession, because need our public health officials. We need to be able to trust them and he's gotten political and picked winners and losers based based on who he likes and who he doesn't.
It's always projection with these people. The ones building distrust of our public health officials are Noem and Ingraham and their ilk.
As we've already discussed here, Noem threw a hissy fit over a report that Sturgis was a super-spreader event, where they found the rally could have led to more than 250,000 cases. Whether you agree with that study or not, I guarantee you it was more than 125.
We'll see how this year goes with the attendance up close to 13 percent from last year, and the delta variant raging across most of the country.
