Team Apocalypse:

EVerY1 IN the DaKOTaS is DYING! The hOSP1TALs are OVERRUNNNN -

Head of Sanford Health, the largest health-care system in the Dakotas:

"We've got this under control. There's not a crisis."

Oh. https://www.argusleader.com/story/news/2020/11/19/sanford-healths-kelby-krabbenhoft-covid-19-hospitalizations-theres-not-crisis/6345661002/

Two points here: The outbreak in the Dakotas looks like everywhere else - a sharp rise in hospitalizations for six weeks or so (sometimes slightly longer) followed by a sudden plateau. This pattern follows regardless of population density, time of year, or anything else...

And less hysterical epidemiologists and virologists would do us all a great service if they could figure out EXACTLY why. Does the answer have to do with herd immunity? Behavioral changes (which can happen whether or not they're mandated)? Some odd property of the virus?

Also: if medical centers in the Dakotas, which are rural, low on tertiary care hospitals, and essentially had no restrictions, didn't get overrun...

Nobody's going to be overrun.