North Dakota: Look Who’s On Top!
The fact that North Dakota of all places, has the highest rate of COVID cases in the world, including the highest rate of deaths, one in every one thousand North Dakotans, is on the one hand astonishing, and on the other, sadly predictable.
This is a rural state. The Rural State. Having lived here now for most of ten years, I’ve maybe forgotten just how perfectly obscure it is. North Dakota?, you might ask, with an enduring blank the only appropriate reply.
And yet, we’ve finally crept our way into mainstream awareness. Sure, we made a brief showing a few years ago as a bit character (the pliant stooge to the archvillain) in the Water Protectors vs. DAPL story, but now we’ve properly seized the spotlight. We are the COVID hotspot of the world (back off South Dakota!).
This is no small feat. It took a certain effort. There was geography to overcome. With only eleven people for every square mile, we had to work to get close enough to spread the virus. Fun fact: one square mile would allow for every single person in North Dakota to stand six feet apart. There are actually only 762,062 of us and there are 774,400 socially distant spots available in that square mile. We had to fuel up our trucks and gobble some miles of gravel to get this far in our race to this dark spotlight.
Also, no one comes here. Even when there isn’t a global pandemic, who visits North Dakota? People on their way to Montana for the second time and people visiting the families from which they fled. So, we had to actively go out and catch the virus and bring it back ourselves. Although, to be fair, flights were cheap.
We are, by and large, a repressed people. Conformity lies at the top of our values. So, you might think it could have gone either way: everyone could have conformed to wearing masks, pursued social distancing measures, etc. But, that would have represented change. And what kind of conformity would that be? No, we like things to stay the way we prefer to believe they have been forever.
Listen, the northern great plains are no joke. Forty degrees below zero on a January morning is just something to talk about instead of our feelings. Winds, having gathered momentum over hundreds of uninterrupted miles on their way from the arctic circle, rip through a frail warm blooded creature such as a person, like a tsunami over a sand castle. Winter is dark. Summer is hot and unreliable. The landscape is stark and dehumanizing.
So, I guess what I’m saying is that it’s no wonder we stick together in a big dumb way. What else could be expected of us? It’s what has worked before. Those who didn’t stick are no longer here, having left or died, frozen to death in a blizzard or worse, moved to California and become… different. No, sticking together is the only way.
What does an epidemio-whatever know about good solid country living? That Anthony Fauci couldn’t last a day on the farm. Chuck Schumer would probably lock us up and let the cows starve. Yup, we need to stay the course. Stick to what we know.
And, we know defiance. We defy reason just living here. Defying science? We do that for breakfast. My point is, we’ll take the hit. It fits better with how we see ourselves. You don’t survive this life by making changes.
Look who’s on top now!
