Lori Walsh: As South Dakotan's seek information regarding Covid-19 in the State, we gather the Dakota political junkies for an update on State politics including government leadership and government partnerships in times of disruption. Mike Card is a political science professor at the University of South Dakota. He joins us on the phone. Hey Mike, welcome.
Mike Card: Thank you. I'm glad to be here.
Lori Walsh: I'm glad that you're here as well. And Tom Dempster is also with us on the phone, a former state lawmaker. Hey Tom, welcome back.
Tom Dempster: Lori, good to talk to you. Mike, nice to talk to you.
Mike Card: Nice to talk to you, Tom.
Lori Walsh: Great. Let's get started with leadership at this point because this is a time when political leaders, governors, presidents, individual lawmakers have an opportunity to rise to the occasion. Mike Card, I want to start with you and Governor Kristi Noem and the response that she's had to the Corona virus pandemic and how it will impact South Dakota. What are your thoughts on her leadership so far?
Mike Card: Well, first of all, I think Governor Noem is demonstrating that she recognizes the interdependencies. Action in one sphere has consequences in another sphere. So I think her reaching out and getting Avera and Sanford as well as regional health out West River to work together with public health sources has been fabulous. I think the CDC director of infectious disease noted that if people are complaining that you're too draconian, your response is about right. I think she's balanced the response fairly well.
Lori Walsh: Yeah. If it looks like you're overdoing it, you're doing it right. Tom Dempster, your thoughts on the leadership? We've had a little time in South Dakota and that's a great benefit to us to get plans into place, but it's also a challenge because we have 11 positive cases and you're asking for a lot with schools closing and basketball tournament's canceled. So that also presents a leadership challenge to say, "look, this is why we're doing this and this is why we're doing it now. And it really matters that we do it together." Your thoughts, Tom?
Tom Dempster: Lori, I'm going to agree with Mike. Lori, I'm going to agree with you. And I always talk that public service is something that you do that is of the highest order of service to mankind. I think you have to recognize the extreme difficulty of the job. And this is true whether you're a governor, whether you're a mayor, whether you're a County commissioner, whether you're in the state legislature, any elected official is standing right in the midst of this crisis.
Anticipating that question, I watched the press conferences of the Governor in California and I watched press conferences of the Governor in Washington. And then of course watched the Governor Noem's press conferences. And here's what I saw in all of those press conferences. I saw an extraordinary degree of confidence. I saw competence. All that was mixed with a sense of equanimity and absolutely with a sense of grace. And I know this sounds too idealistic or may sound too idealistic, but whether the Governor of California or the Governor of Washington or the Governor of South Dakota, I saw each of them standing there with all of this stress, as if it was an act of love. Quite incredible.
Lori Walsh: Tom, as a former state lawmaker, we're starting to see lawmakers tweeting out things on their individual Twitter accounts. What's your advice to state lawmakers on how they can respond right now? I know I've been very careful about anything I tweeted out or put on Facebook that was personal right now because people are looking to me as a journalist for really one thing. So I've streamlined my communication, so it's not really about my family or what's happening to me personally. As a former lawmaker, the individual lawmakers, what's your advice to them about how they handle their communications with constituents in small town South Dakota and with social media in the larger world?
Tom Dempster: I mean this crisis, in my mind, has four stages to it. The first is recognizing where we are. The second is preparing for the onslaught. The third is endure the onslaught when it inevitably comes. And then finally recover. And all of those things require that we simply pull all of our resources together. And that goes back to my original statement Lori, is that I do believe that holding public office is of the highest order of service and that means it's your responsibility to find public policy that works and absolutely your responsibility to pull this community together.
Lori Walsh: Mike Card, any thoughts from you on those individual lawmakers? And Governor Noem had at town hall talking with lawmakers? What are your thoughts on those lawmakers responsibility and opportunity at this time?
Mike Card: Well, I have a slightly different role and I'm going to try to relate that when I'm working with my students who I'm dealing with remotely, I at first translated the research and the public policy to them and realized, if we're going to give credible, accurate, consistent information, my best bet is actually to link them to the appropriate information rather than risk my mistranslating the information. But I think Tom is exactly right to recognize where we are and to realize we don't know where we are because of the shortage of tests.
But we are preparing and I think the messages that he recognized from the Governors of the States to exhibit confidence that we can make it through this if we work together and competence, that we have public servants both elected and appointed who are in place, and to recognize that we need to give each other a little bit of grace. As a result of several public health emergencies over time, our legislature and governors in the past and dedicated public servants have set up an emergency response. Public health, epidemiology and emergency response all work together. I have great confidence we'll make it through this. There will be problems. The interdependencies of stopping the spread of the Corona virus or Covid-19 is going to create economic hardship for people. But if we don't stop the spread of the virus, well we may not be around to recover.
Lori Walsh: And this is just in from SDPB reporter Jacqueline Henry, she says the state health lab is no longer processing tests for Covid-19 due to a shortage of supplies. South Dakota health care providers can continue collecting specimens as they deem necessary, but test results are delayed. Department of health officials say they do not have a timeline for when test processing will resume. The state now has 350 pending tests up from 35 yesterday, just Tuesday. There are 11 confirmed cases of Covid-19 in South Dakota. And Tom Dempster, we're going to hear, that's one of the things with the pace of this is that every time you turn around there's a, "this just in", "this breaking news", talk a little bit Tom about holding people accountable because as we hear that from the state department of health, to say you can keep collecting the specimens, but there's a shortage of supplies at the state health lab for processing those tests. People are going to have some questions and my question for you is, Tom, when is the time for accountability? Is it now? Is it two weeks ago?
Tom Dempster: Great question. Lori, I think the time for... The New York times yesterday or the day before, had an article in it and they stated that the assumptions that the administration, that the federal government has accepted or their operational plan excepts the numbers from the Imperial college in London that talks about how devastating this is likely to be in the United States. And it's the first time that I've heard those numbers and those numbers are, they are devastating. They say left untended, 2.2 million Americans will die in the coming months. Doing everything that we're doing to distance ourselves and everything else, 1.1 million will die. Let's hope that those numbers are absolutely wrong, but I think that's the seriousness of this. My answer to your question is the time to hold people responsible, for a lack of supplies or for a lack of testing capacity. Perhaps is an August or September.
It's when this mountain that we're walking into this spring and this summer, when this mountain subsides and when winter's turned to spring and when fall comes, perhaps that's the time to hold people accountable. But for now it's pull everything together. Pull your families together. You don't have families? Find another. Find other more community type families. And that's why... And I don't mean to be a lick spittle here, where I say congratulations to the Mayor and congratulations to the Governor. It's not that at all. It's just there to date, and I expect throughout this crisis, they've demonstrated capacity to do everything in their power. Even unexpected things. Mayor TenHaken in Sioux falls, who would have expected that he would have pulled together a one Sioux falls fund? Who would've expected that he likely would have been a process with his friend, Rick [inaudible 00:11:53] to pull 37 churches together, to get food and supplies to families in need. It's a long answer to your question. Now's the time to come together.
Lori Walsh: Right. Mike Card, because of that halt on processing the tests, due to a shortage of supplies at the state department of health, we can't say that there are no new cases. That number is going to sit at 11 until those supplies come in. There'll be more and more tests pending. That's a problem for just the information of this. Mike Card, talk a little bit about the responsibility that shifts to really all of us, when we have symptoms to all of us, when we don't have symptoms and our social... This is a partnership. We hear the president Mike keep talking about, it's a vast public and private partnership, but the other force in play here, which I think Pice president Mike Pence is really focused on is, this is the power of the American people. Does it feel to you like it's up to us in a lot of ways to be a really vital part, at least of the challenges ahead?
Mike Card: Well, I think it is. And whatever we as individuals can do, are things like don't hoard more than a week's worth of things. The opportunity to buy forward, to buy gift certificates and prepaid cards for local businesses. And to take care of ourselves and to take care of ourselves and others around us to make sure that we aren't typhoid Mikes of the ilk. That if I have a headache and I have a fever, I'd better be not talking to anybody. And those in my household should now be even in a more strict quarantine type situation. We have responsibilities to others to take care of ourselves, but also to remember that we may be responsible for spreading this virus further. And in that sense, the interdependencies are still there.
Lori Walsh: Yeah. Tom Dempster, obviously a huge burden on people adding to the stress and to the real life day to day challenges of even buying groceries. Is, what's happening in the stock market, what's happening to people's portfolios, people who are living on retirement, payouts every month are seeing them shrink. People who are just starting investing, or having savings account. There's a huge financial burden here for businesses and for individuals. With your experience as a financial planner, have you seen anything like this before? Can you relate it to anything else or are we in... I keep hearing this word unprecedented and I'm a little tired of it. already Is this unprecedented from the economic standpoint Tom?
Tom Dempster: Here's the good news.
Lori Walsh: Oh, yay. Just pause for a minute. There's going to be good news, everybody tune in. Go ahead.
Tom Dempster: Seriously, the best according to advisors that I pay a great deal of attention to. Do you know what the best performing stock market is in the world today?
Lori Walsh: I do not.
Tom Dempster: China. That means, when this summer is over, that this should be a temporary event. We will get this in hand. This, in my opinion, is nothing like the financial crisis that we endured. Had that taken force, I'm not so certain that we would be having a conversation today. This is nothing like that at all. This is something that is temporary. This is something that is very serious, is life threatening, especially for vulnerable populations. But have I seen market free falls like this in my life before? Oh, let me count them, once, twice, three times, four times, five times, probably six times in my career.
Lori Walsh: Okay. Hold on for the ride investors.
Tom Dempster: We have to.
Lori Walsh: There are economically vulnerable people as well that have challenges that... Here I am at work. I'm collecting a paycheck. I'm allowed to work. They've created a safe space for me at work to keep things as germ-free as possible. There are many people who don't have that advantage. Tom, are you hearing from the White House, from the Fed? From the treasury department? Are you hearing the kinds of things from Congress that you think that they get that and they're taking action? Or do you think more needs to be done more quickly?
Tom Dempster: Let's hope that... I mean we've done, I think much of what we can do with monetary policy. That's oxygen and that's oxygen to the economy and we need oxygen to the economy for sure. We're now hearing conversations that first started with Romney a couple of days ago, as a matter of fact of distributing a thousand dollar cheques to everyone. This goes right back to some decades ago, to Milton Friedman, the University of Chicago economist. To President Richard Nixon and to Senator George McGovern that felt that the best welfare policy that we should have is a negative income tax. We even heard that in this most recent presidential debate. Giving a thousand dollars in everybody's hands in the next couple of weeks is exactly what we need to do. Let's hope that we can get it done.
Lori Walsh: Mike Card, let's close with this and that is your students and your work to transfer learning online. It's a Professor's opportunity to really unpack these things in classes, and it's also an enormous challenge. How are people at USD and you personally handling that transition because students are also incredibly disrupted at this time, which is an understatement.
Mike Card: Well, yeah many had to move, and uproot their lives because in order to keep them safe, we can't have them be packed in residence halls and in classrooms where we can't maintain a six foot distance from each other. So to prevent the spread, we really faced little choice but to send them home and to try to provide remote learning opportunities for them. It's new for many people. It requires more flexibility on the faculty members part. It requires tolerance on the students part, as many faculty are learning to use tools that we've never had to use before.
I'm very fortunate that I've taught online for some 20 years. I still learn new things every semester. But it certainly is a challenge. But it also gives both students a way to structure their days. And if we can be flexible for the working adults who are in some of our classes to do things so that they can watch them later, having a live discussion is difficult because the students may still have jobs, may have other activities that they need to attend to and aren't sitting around waiting for us to teach them.
But to make our materials and our conversations asynchronous as we would say without time, so that they can access them and come and revisit. It will probably change the way that we provide education in South Dakota to a large extent. And that will be interesting to see how this all shakes out.
Flexibility is really the key here and it seems to be flexibility is the key all around the board. Mr Dempster mentioned that. Try new things, figure out how to get this done.
Lori Walsh: Yeah. And a little bit of grace.
Mike Card: And a little bit of grace.
Tom Dempster: A lot of grace.
Lori Walsh: Gentlemen, thank you for your insight and for just elevating vocabulary here on In the Moment today. We really appreciate your time, Tom Dempster. Thanks.
Tom Dempster: Absolutely Lori, thank you.
Lori Walsh: Mike Card, thanks as well.
Mike Card: Thank you. Be well.
You can access all of SDPB's local COVID-19 coverage at www.sdpb.org/covid