Kristi Noem Still Doesn’t Understand How COVID and Vaccines Work The reckless South Dakota governor wants to “recognize natural immunity” from COVID. She’s not only wrong—she’s also encouraging hesitant folks not to get vaccinated. https://www.thedailybeast.com/south...doesnt-understand-how-covid-and-vaccines-work Halfway into robotically reading her hour-long State of the State speech off teleprompters, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem promised “to protect the people’s right to a medical or religious exemption from COVID vaccines.” She then raised her hand with the index finger extended to emphasize some particular idiocy. “We will also recognize natural immunity,” she said. The majority of the state legislators applauded, indicating they are not only Republicans but also foolish enough to endorse her fiction that people who have had COVID-19 do not need to be vaccinated. A leading research bioinformatician at the Yale School of Public Health terms such thinking “irresponsible.” “Contracting COVID once does not make you immune over the long term and certainly does not make you immune to new variants,” Jeffrey Townsend told The Daily Beast on Tuesday. Townsend is the author of a study published by The Lancet Microbe in October 2021 whose conclusion he summarized in a Yale News write-up. “Reinfection can reasonably happen in three months or less,” he was quoted saying. “Therefore, those who have been naturally infected should get vaccinated. Previous infection alone can offer very little long-term protection against subsequent infections.” The surge of the Omicron variant has been affirming that principle as people are getting COVID for a second or even a third time. Noem is not just wrong but reprehensibly reckless. “The issue with that declaration is that there’s going to be many people who are not going to be protected against new infections, whether or not they’re new variants,” Townsend said. “Having such a declaration is not properly understanding the dynamics in this pandemic.” He added that the present COVID situation “is as serious as it has ever been.” “We’re going to have more people in the hospital with Omicron now than from other variants,” he said. “It’s already crazy and it’s getting worse.” And as has been repeatedly noted by The Daily Beast, there is a possibility that a variant can arise that is as contagious as Omicron and as deadly as Delta. “And the possibility of that variant increases with people getting infected more,” Townsend said. “The more people there are, the more different variants form and some of them, some very small fraction of them, are going to become new variants that are immunoevasive.” One variant of the very small fraction of infections can become a surge if it can evade the body’s defense. “And the immunoevasion will occur regardless of whether it’s vaccine or natural immunity,” Townsend added. In other words, people who refuse to get vaccinated and give the virus more opportunities to mutate are endangering all of us, even those responsible enough to get the jab. And in that lies ultimate fallacy in Noem’s disingenuous insistence that she is not anti-vaccine, merely pro freedom. “Governor Noem has repeatedly encouraged South Dakotans to get vaccinated against COVID-19, but she has consistently reiterated that this should be a choice,” her spokesman, Ian Frazer, told The Daily Beast on Tuesday. But when Noem suggests that having had COVID makes the vaccine unnecessary, she is in truth encouraging hesitant folks not to get the jab. And her resistance to a mandate is part of an image she is constructing of a cowboy-hatted, horse-riding, flag-waving champion of freedom who has led South Dakota to economic triumph amid the pandemic “The strongest economy in America,” Noem has boasted again and again. In truth, South Dakota ranked 45th in GDP for the third quarter of 2021 as reported by the Board of Economic Analysis of the U.S. Department of Commerce. That illusion seems to be part of her effort to be on the Republican ticket in the next presidential election. The Trumpian types have sought to minimize the pandemic from the start, and Noem has embraced immunity as a magical solution to the pandemic. Back in May, she announced at a tourism event that South Dakota was about to achieve herd immunity. “We’re very, very close, and I would expect that most people in the state feel comfortable conducting normal day to day life activities. We’ve got distribution levels that are very good and outstanding across the country… We’ve got people who had the virus and have recovered from it, and a lot of folks have the antibodies.” By “distribution levels,” Noem apparently meant positivity rate. It was then down to 14 percent in South Dakota. It has spiked above 33 percent with the arrival of Omicron. Those who tested positive on Thursday included the 14-year-old son of a Sioux Falls businesswoman. The teen had just returned to school following the holidays. The mask policy there is in keeping with Noem’s no-mandate philosophy. “None of the kids wear masks at school,” reported the businesswoman, who asked that her name not be used. She said her son’s oxygen level had dropped to 92 percent when it should be 98 or higher. He was coughing so hard on Monday night that his mother dashed out to a Walgreens on 41st Street. She arrived only to find it had closed early due to a pandemic-related shortage. “When your kid’s sick as hell and you can’t get a bottle of cough syrup because Walgreens shut down, I wouldn’t call that freedom,” she told The Daily Beast.
Looks like all of GQP wants to give Kristi a little spanking... The Republican Knives Are Out for South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem She’s still beloved by the masses. But suddenly it seems like every Republican official in the state has beef with the woman in charge https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-republican-knives-are-out-for-south-dakota-gov-kristi-noem
Let's catch up with unethical Kristi Noem... Board: SD Gov. Kristi Noem may have ‘engaged in misconduct’ https://apnews.com/article/kristi-noem-south-dakota-sd-state-wire-1c5fb7828aba13ad4f6467b76554c022 A South Dakota ethics board on Monday said it found sufficient information that Gov. Kristi Noem may have “engaged in misconduct” when she intervened in her daughter’s application for a real estate appraiser license, and it referred a separate complaint over her state airplane use to the state’s attorney general for investigation. The three retired judges on the Government Accountability Board determined that “appropriate action” could be taken against Noem for her role in her daughter’s appraiser licensure, though it didn’t specify the action. The board’s moves potentially escalate the ramifications of investigations into Noem. The Republican governor faces reelection this year and has also positioned herself as an aspirant to the White House in 2024. She is under scrutiny from the board after Jason Ravnsborg, the state’s former Republican attorney general, filed complaints that stemmed from media reports on Noem’s actions in office. She has denied any wrongdoing. After meeting in a closed-door session for one hour Monday, the board voted unanimously to invoke procedures that allow for a contested case hearing to give Noem a chance to publicly defend herself against allegations of “misconduct” related to “conflicts of interest” and “malfeasance.” The board also dismissed Ravnsborg’s allegations that Noem misused state funds in the episode. However, the retired judges left it unclear how they will proceed. Lori Wilbur, the board chair, said the complaint was “partially dismissed and partially closed,” but added that the complaint could be reopened. She declined to discuss what would cause the board to reopen the complaint. The board can issue a public or private reprimand or direct an official to do community service. It can also make recommendations to the governor — though that option seems unlikely since the complaints are leveled against Noem. The AP first reported that the governor took a hands-on role in a state agency soon after it had moved to deny her daughter’s application for an appraiser license in 2020. Noem had called a meeting with her daughter, the labor secretary and the then-director of the appraiser certification program where a plan was discussed to give the governor’s daughter, Kassidy Peters, another chance to show she could meet federal standards in her appraiser work. The complaints are proving to be the first major test of the board, which was launched in 2017 in response to several scandals in state government. It has never taken public action against a state official. Noem later Monday struck back at the board of retired judges. A spokesman for her campaign, Ian Fury, said that the board’s action “did not follow state law or precedent.” “They have yet to point to one single statute the governor has violated in either of these complaints,” he said in a statement. The retired judges also referred a complaint that Noem flew on state-owned airplanes to political events to the state attorney general’s office for further investigation. That puts the investigation under the oversight of the interim attorney general, Mark Vargo, who was appointed by Noem. When asked whether he would recuse himself from the investigation, Vargo said in a statement: “Based on the fact that this just happened, no decision has been made.” “We will be diligent in our duty and thoroughly investigate the complaint that the Government Accountability Board has presented to the Attorney General’s Office,” he said in an earlier statement. “The investigation, as with all other investigations, will remain confidential as does the complaint that has been presented to us. We have no other comment at this time.” The board handled the complaints only by case number and did not refer to Noem directly in either case. Ravnsborg provided the case numbers to The Associated Press. “Knowing what I know as the complainant, Gov. Noem should be fully investigated for her abuse of power in getting her daughter an appraiser license, and Gov. Noem should be prosecuted for her criminal use of state resources for personal gain,” he said in a statement. The board plans to publicly release the complaint over the appraiser license for Noem after redacting some sections. It did not give a date for when that will happen. Noem and Ravnsborg have become political enemies since he fatally struck a pedestrian in 2020. Noem pushed hard for him to be removed from office, and the state Senate convicted him on impeachment charges and removed him as attorney general. He had continued to press the complaints as a private citizen. Fury, Noem’s spokesman, charged that Ravnsborg’s complaints “are all political and filed by a disgraced former attorney general who literally killed a man, lied about it, and tried to cover it up. Gov. Noem was the first to call him out for this, and he filed these complaints in retaliation.” He also repeated Noem’s defense that she followed the law in handling her daughter’s licensure and that Peters received no special treatment. Noem’s office has said the plan for Peters to get another chance was already in the works before the meeting, but the agency’s director, Sherry Bren, told a legislative committee last year that she felt “intimidated” during the meeting at the governor’s mansion where Peters’ unsuccessful application was discussed in detail. A Republican-controlled legislative committee that probed the episode concluded that Peters received special treatment. Bren was also pressured to retire later in 2020 and eventually received a $200,000 settlement to withdraw an age discrimination complaint. The former attorney general’s other complaint was sparked after online news website Raw Story found that Noem in 2019 used a state airplane to travel to events hosted by political organizations such as the National Rifle Association and the Republican Jewish Coalition, even though South Dakota law bars state airplanes from being used for anything other than state business. Noem has said she was traveling to the events as an ambassador for the state.
The Noem ethics documents are out... Yep, she has no ethics. Ethics board releases documents in Gov. Kristi Noem nepotism complaint https://www.msn.com/en-us/travel/ne...v-kristi-noem-nepotism-complaint/ar-AA11E0CG? (Article has links to document at the bottom.)
She is kissing up to Trump like mad trying to get the VP slot. It's very sad. The Governor Who Wants to Be Trump’s Next Apprentice If Trump wins the GOP nomination, he’ll want a running mate who shows unquestioning loyalty. Kristi Noem can do that. https://www.theatlantic.com/politic...d-trump-vice-president-elise-stefanik/677069/ As every politician knows, openly campaigning for the job of vice president is bad form. But Kristi Noem doesn’t seem to care. Last week alone, the South Dakota governor sent out a dozen tweets praising Donald Trump. She went on Fox News’s Hannity to condemn attempts in Maine and Colorado to remove the former president from the ballot. And she hosted a get-out-the-caucus rally for him across the border in Iowa. “Show up for a couple hours and fight for the man that’s fought for you for years!” the 52-year-old governor told the crowd at the event in Sioux City. “The only reason that we have this country is because of the good that he did when he was in that White House—and how he still continues to tell the truth out there every single day.” Asked by a reporter at the event whether she would consider the Trump VP slot, Noem smiled and replied, “I think anybody in this country, if they were offered it, needs to consider it.” Later, she retweeted the clip. (More at above url)