When the pandemic first hit the US, the 'Plains States', including South Dakota, escaped relatively lightly. On April 15, coronavirus daily diagnoses in South Dakota peaked at 181. The daily death count topped out on May 6 when five people passed away. This time around, however, South Dakota has not been so fortunate.

Over the last week, South Dakota has recorded stark COVID-19 death rates and its hospitals are rapidly filling up with COVID patients. How did this happen? Because its governor adopted an extreme libertarian approach and resisted imposing any orders for people to stay at home, instead preferring to give residents the freedom to continue their lives as they liked, with no mandate on masks or stay-at-home orders.

Besides shoppers and workers being told to keep their distance from each other, for the most part, South Dakota's governor, Kristi Noem, has refused to place any restrictions on people's lives. In April, she complained that 'so many people [had given] up their liberties for just a little bit of security'. Over the summer, as many as 500,000 people attended a mass motorcycle rally in the state.