Social Distancing Comes Naturally in South Dakota

Wall Street Journal • April 7, 2020

The pace of life on the prairie is always slow and steady, so few are panicking about the coronavirus.

Rapid City, S.D.
The prisoners were panicking in Pierre. On March 23, an inmate at the Pierre Community Work Center, South Dakota’s minimum-security prison for women, was taken to be tested for Covid-19. Her fellow prisoners decided they were doomed. At 8:43 p.m. they jimmied open an exterior door, and nine of them escaped into the night, fleeing the disease.
The escapees were among the few Dakotans showing much sign of concern. Reading about China, New York and Italy, it’s tempting to believe the end times have come. Prairie people aren’t so apocalyptic. 
In February, government officials and newspaper columnists were mulling the possibility of riots and looting, as though the Great Plains were about to become the set of “Mad Max.” A few weeks later and things have settled. These days the mood is surprisingly relaxed. Chalk it up to a simple fact: South Dakota has seen few cases of coronavirus. As of April 3, it had some of the lowest numbers in the country, with 165 confirmed cases, two deaths, 57 recoveries and 4,217 negative tests.
Perhaps something more elemental explains the lack of alarm. “Midwesterners aren’t really panickers,” says José-Marie Griffiths, president of Dakota State University. South Dakota is an agricultural state, a place where the foundation of local culture remains the old farms and ranches. People are taught from an early age to keep their feelings to themselves, work hard and expect that something will go wrong. A deadly pandemic threatening lives and livelihoods only confirms everybody’s worldview. The social expectation is impassivity.
This sangfroid irritates some. “We’ve been sitting here for two hours listening to public comments, and the majority of them were against taking harsh actions,” complained Rapid City Mayor Steve Allender at a City Council meeting on March 22. Nonetheless, Rapid City did order the closing of some public businesses, even while Mr. Allender tried to reassure his constituents that he was not planning a citywide shutdown. Sioux Falls, on the other hand, has prohibited gatherings in bars, restaurants and city-owned property.
With well under a million people spread across 77,000 square miles, South Dakota was practicing its own form of social distancing long before the coronavirus came along. Most of the state’s current measures are prophylactic, drawn more from national and international news than from anything local. What works in a big coastal city may not be helpful in a place like Custer, population 2,067. South Dakota’s population density is around 11 people per square mile. For comparison, New York City has more than 26,000 people per square mile.
Even in a place where life moves slower, things are slowing down. “We are seeing huge increases at the state level in unemployment, people that do not have jobs, that are needing help to pay their bills,” Gov. Kristi Noem said on Thursday. Still, the rural Midwest may suffer less than other regions, with demand for livestock, wheat and corn likely to remain strong.
It’s no consolation to the business owners and workers who are already suffering to say that things aren’t as bad as they could be, but the real effect on the state’s economy won’t be felt until summer. Tourism supports roughly 55,000 jobs in South Dakota, and last summer visitors spent $4.1 billion. Note that the total state budget in 2019 was only $4.9 billion.
Tourists won’t be coming from overseas to see Mount Rushmore or the Badlands this year. Americans from other states might not risk visiting either. Hundreds of thousands could skip the annual Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in August, which usually puts a bulge in state coffers. Businesses that cater to tourists typically carry winter losses in anticipation of summer sales. Their lines of credit are already stretched as far as they will go.
For now, at least, South Dakotans seem to be pressing on in their usual way. After 150 years, something of the prairie—the open spaces, the distant horizons—has worked its way into the stoic souls and laconic speech of those who live here. People here know how to keep their distance. It comes naturally.
By the end of the week, seven of the nine women who escaped the Pierre Community Work Center had been recaptured. The warden resigned, of course. But even at the women’s prison, life goes on pretty much as usual.
Ms. Bottum is a civil-engineering student at the South Dakota School of Mines.
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