Governor Noem: Modeling Isn’t Reality

Governor Noem: Modeling Isn’t Reality

PIERRE, S.D. – Today, Governor Kristi Noem issued the following statement on the grossly misleading San Diego State CHEPS study regarding COVID-19 cases following the Sturgis rally:

“This report isn’t science; it’s fiction. Under the guise of academic research, this report is nothing short of an attack on those who exercised their personal freedom to attend Sturgis,” said Governor Noem. “Predictably, some in the media breathlessly report on this non-peer reviewed model, built on incredibly faulty assumptions that do not reflect the actual facts and data here in South Dakota.

“At one point, academic modeling also told us that South Dakota would have 10,000 COVID patients in the hospital at our peak.  Today, we have less than 70.  I look forward to good journalists, credible academics, and honest citizens repudiating this nonsense.”

For more data on COVID-19 in South Dakota, visit COVID.SD.GOV.

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36 thoughts on “Governor Noem: Modeling Isn’t Reality”

  1. Kudos to the Governor for saying the Emperor (self-appointed “experts”) have no clothes.

    Not only have the missed every projection and their underlying assumptions proven to be deceptive (the Governor is too kind), whether intentional or unintentional, people of integrity when confronted with being so off come clean and explain what they got wrong and how it happened.

    These people have just kept on pontificating as if they have been right every time instead of being wrong every time. THEY NEED TO BE IGNORED AND SUED FOR MALPRACTICE.

    1. Do you ever stop lying? AGAIN, you said that Covid was going to be no worse than swine flu, which killed 12k people. You STILL haven’t admitted that you spoke directly out of your backside and try to blame someone else every time you are pressed on it. You are the worst kind of hypocrite, Troy.

      1. Will you admit the “experts” were wrong?

        Also, when we factor Missing curable diagnoses like breast cancer, businesses closing (about 80,000 last count) then untimely deaths go to stress on financial hardships, divorces and supply chains broken thus GDP impacted this will go down as the worst “expert” disaster ever.

        1. That’s the great thing about the scientific method: being wrong and adjusting based on updated data is part of the process. Yeah. Many of them were wrong. Now, let’s see Troy admit he was wrong and see if he calls himself a moron the way he does the people who do this for a living. Spoiler: he won’t. Troy is special, you see. He doesn’t have to live up to the standards he would force on others.

  2. Seems pretty well referenced and sourced to me. I look forward to Noems data disproving it.

    “Data, facts, science.”
    “No no, not those data, facts, science.”

    1. There are no facts or science in the study at all. It is all use of models which have been repudiated with history of Covid being less contagious and deadly (especially to the general public).

      The fact you think it is well referenced and sourced is not very complementary. I’d be anonymous if I were you too.

    2. Typically objective scientific data does not publish opinion into a study. The reference list contains sources from “Forbes”, “The Rapid City Journal”, and other non-factual sources. That is a red flag immediately without even having to read.

  3. I read the one from the German “think” tank sponsored by a University in Germany, writing about the Sturgis rally. No – I mean – NO facts. A high school debater that finished last in the Speech Fiesta would wipe the mat with them.
    So here’s what’s a little funny to pick up on — the hatred — the animosity – these characters have towards South Dakota. Who’d have guessed that freedom would cause so much angst. Some of these states and countries ought to try it.

  4. Governor Noem – time to mount-up, cowgirl.

    Maybe need to fire a few advisors or key leaders?

    I think it’s time to lift-up the plywood around the barn and see what comes scurrying out.

    https://plainstribune.com/podcast/?service=podcast.PodCastDetail&streamId=698c4581c63e6dd417bf726fd07ccf31

    Did you receive my last three emails?

    Key takeaway from the show for folks who don’t have the time .. there is such a thing as Political Trafficking.

    Sincerely,

    John

  5. Please, for the love of all things great and tiny, debunk the information in this report. If we cannot, let’s get to work to make it better.

    1. actually, resisting the alinsky model requires you to NOT get bogged down in minutiae and splitting hairs over data points. the governor’s doing fine.

  6. As a research scientist, I thought the methodology of this study to be strong. The research team appropriately selected valid procedures, collection, research design, and contextual support which all can be verified through their extensive referencing of current literature. If anything, their modeling approach seems quite moderate -almost could posit that they played it safe with the estimates. I don’t usually comment on political posturings – of either side. But, the statement regarding the lack of legitimacy and academic nature of the study is just not true. Leave academic rebuttal to the scientists – let them conduct their work. An apology is warrented.

    1. It is a model which makes assumptions regarding the virility, deadliness and breadth of transmission which were speculated in March and have since debunked by experience and actual (vs. speculated) data.

      However, in case you haven’t noticed, the Rally started a month ago and has been over for 23 days. When the Rally ended on August 16:

      5 Day average new cases were 112. Today, they are 213 and declining since the high on August 30 (353).

      5 Day average hospitalizations were 5.8. Today, it is 8.2 which is over 20 times less than what your “model” predicts should be happening now.

      5 Day average deaths were 1.2. Today, it is .93. In other words, your model is wholly debunked since none of the projections have come true* or is there an indication of any deterioration of any critical information.

      So, as a research scientist, if you hold onto to dated and debunked hypothesis, you are should be fired. As should the people who put this out using tons fo debunked sources to give an air of credibility.

      When the lie is really big and obvious, it doesn’t take a scientist to call bullshit. But it is stuff like this which is why nobody listens to the “experts” anymore. They are just snake oil salesmen practicing quackery.

      1. as a research online commmentator i’d just like to say i find all of troy’s comments to be well reasoned and researched.

        1. Yeah, except the part that ignores that most rally attendees aren’t from SD. Trying to use SD figures alone to do whatever passes for “debunking” for y’all is sloppier than the work of the study you’re criticizing. Models are imperfect because the data is imperfect, but throwing lazy cherry-pickings doesn’t move the needle. If you want better data a models then we’d need to exponentially increase testing (especially of non-symptomatic individuals).

          1. Well, I showed national figures: no evidence of extra-ordinary spread from Sturgis and declining daily cases, hospitalizations and deaths.

            But, as the “study” asserted, the locals didn’t stay home but participated, thus if it was a superspreader event, Sturgis and the region would be a hotspot but in reality isn’t.

            More lies by the so-called “experts.” Follow them at your own peril.

            1. You used statewide figures you gaslighting blowhard. The US has a daily new case rate 5 day average of ~36,000. If you’re trying to show national cases per 100,000 your math is straight up sloppy as you’re off a magnitude of ten and change.

              1. Read all of my comments. I answered different posts to address them as requested. The national numbers were to point out national cases are not going up after the fake super spreader event.

  7. This “study” appears to be based on estimates based on anonymous cell phone tracking, with no link to actual cases.

    Health officials have only linked one death to the rally: a male biker in his 60s with underlying conditions. Only 260 cases in 11 states have been officially connected to the rally by government officials.

    Maybe, they should have called it the “Sturgis Riot”, so COVID couldn’t spread. . .

    “Researchers concluded that more than 266,000 cases were tied to the event attended by more than 460,000 individuals.”

    Since the end of the Sturgis rally, the US has recorded just over 1M cases. This model is saying that this one rally is responsible for 1/4 of those cases. People need to check their credulity.

    Some math: 260 confirmed cases turned into 250,000 cases in less than a month?
    With a incubation period of 2 weeks, each infected person in the chain would have to infect about 30 others. At that rate the entire US would be infected in 2 months. Not a credible model.

    26 of 640 people in Sturgis tested positive. All asymptomatic. That’s a 4% positive rate.
    Academic modeling also told us that South Dakota would have 10,000 COVID patients in the hospital at our peak. Today, we have less than 70.

    1. You did notice the high-end estimates of those models (IHME and John Hopkins in particular as your figures came from those) assumed that people and communities SD wouldn’t implement school and business closures, social distancing, masking, or any other preventative measure, right? In case you missed it, we did those things.

      I’m assuming if your house is prone to basement flooding you’d invest in a sump pump or drain tile to avoid a flooded basement. Do you also then complain about how you wasted thousands of dollars or useless preventative measures and your basement hasn’t flooded since? Because you’re doing that now.

  8. What is beyond laughable is the statement that each case will incur $46,000 of medical expenses resulting in over 12 billion in total cost.
    That alone is enough to completely discredit the entire report.

  9. William,

    These people have been lying since the beginning and ultimately liars get exposed.

    If it is as contagious as they said, why aren’t more people infected since so many people aren’t following “the rules” and there are so many of these big gatherings like the 4th of July event, the race at Husetts, and of course the Sturgis Bike Rally?

    Or maybe it is as contagious as they say and we have had a hundred million people infected like their models projected. But if that is the case this is not nearly as deadly as they said.

    And, while we are talking about them lying, remember them saying we can’t count on herd immunity as people might not become immune from infection but we need to wait for a vaccine. The problem with that is vaccines mimic infection, trigger an immune response from which we have immunity. Thus, if we don’t get natural immunity, the vaccine is impossible it can trigger a response of immunity. Yet the “experts” told that lie in the same sentence.

    Or if they aren’t lying, they are wholly incompetent. In either case, only a fool would keep following their false prognostications.

  10. I thought the best part of the study was the use of cellphone data. It’s so reliable. (snark)
    My cellphone frequently shows me driving across golf courses, open fields and bodies of water.

    Several times William’s phone has taken an off-road several mile diagonal route through a field to a spot near I-29 where there isnt anything, not even a billboard, in the middle of the night. And then it comes home. No, we are not strapping the phone to a deer.

    Today, we traveled to Sioux Falls and back in the same vehicle. Tracking data shows that our phones took very different routes. Cell phone data frequently shows the two phones miles apart when in the same car.

    For fun I installed the Care19 app on my phone months ago. It’s supposed to assist the DOH in the event I get sick. Every day I check the app to see where it thinks I have been. Everyday, it’s wrong. One of the most interesting and consistent errors is that it NEVER records any visits to a medical or dental facility. This is so consistent it must be deliberate. I will leave it to the conspiracy theorists to decide why such an app would have no record of visits to a place where you are most likely to encounter sick people. Today it has no record of nearly 2 hours spent at Avera McKennan. Then it thinks I went to Taco Bell in Sioux Falls (wrong) and omitted a stop I made at Runnings in Brookings.

    This model is likely a classic case of “garbage in, garbage out.” Anybody who starts with the premise that cell phone tracking data is reliable is going to end up with garbage.

  11. Sturgis was 10-14 days in happening. The riots in Portland have gone on for 100 days plus. Then throw in Seattle. No spread of Virus!!! Odd or is tear gas/burning buildings/moltov cocktails the very miracle cure we need for COVID 19? Come on people—yes it true something going around. But this has turned political—it is up ending our lives. Destroying the fabric of the country. So confusing what is the real truth out here. TEAR GAS FOR ALL!! Seems to be the miricle cure.

  12. All the experts calling for and hoping for doom and gloom should move to New York where many political experts live and breathe and lie and die while getting sued by their States business owners for killing their livelihoods and lives.

  13. I see the Argus put on the first page this study and this reporter took all the information “at face value.”

    Dear Megan, real life results is more credible than ivory tower projections. Repeating at face value things which have been proven untrue by actual results makes you look like a moron.

      1. covid.sd.gov

        This shows that the cases, hospitalizations, and deaths didn’t occur and neither is there any indication of a spike in order for the assertions they said was true.

        Actual results debunks them totally. I think the most telling is what occurred from August 26-September 3rd (makes sense since Sturgis had ended, we were at the end of the incubation period post Rally, and we were testing all the students going back to college) and September 4-9th:

        Daily average new cases: 309 down to 206

        Daily average hospitalizations: 8 up to 9 (while up it is a long ways from significant)

        Daily average deaths: .78 down to .33. (For this to be even remotely credible, deaths should be spiking nationally too. However the daily national death toll has dropped from 977 per day to 576 in the same periods).

        Source for the national data is https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

        Now the big question is whether having actual facts and data will change your mind or you’ll just hold dear to your perceptions formed from drinking the Kool-aid.

  14. Anonymous: comman sense says it not true. There really no numbers of infection or hospitalization numbers that that jive with the numbers given in report. All new infections in that time period would have had to come from Sturgis. So that would mean it was at stand still An reactivated. Plus not all cell phones are traceable. Plus not all areas have that capability in software etc. NOT POSSIBLE TO TRACK THAT MANY PEOPLE! Use your head for something besides a hat rack.

  15. What about extraneous variables? School starting, fairs, people getting tired of being shut in, etc. This is no scientific study. Plus, a few more cases per 1000 (when cases were already low) hardly warrants publicity. If it were a true pandemic worthy of shutting people in and ruining their lives – wouldn’t it have just exploded after Sturgis with dead bodies lying in around in the aftermath? Laughable. It drives the media absolutely nuts that SD got it right and they will use any ounce of negative data to try to prove that SD is full of “uneducated, deplorable, rednecks”. In the end, we will be the only ones left with an economy and personal freedoms.

  16. Here is another good source. https://covidtracking.com/data

    As you can see right at the top a good summary of what has occurred nationally:

    Daily testing has been roughly 750,000 a day since August 1 (thus lower cases isn’t because we are testing less.

    People in the hospital has steadily declined from 54,000 on August 1 to 32,000 today.

    Daily deaths has steadily declined from 1,190 on August 1 to 500 yesterday.

    If the Sturgis Rally (concluded 24 days ago) was a really big super spreader, how can the rate of decline in these items be happening?

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