North Dakota
Briand provides a graph like this for all 50 US States plus New York City, showing weekly deaths with lines of different colors for each year. The green line shows weekly mortality for North Dakota from August 2019 to August 2020, and it is very similar to all the other years, with a peak which is lower than the 2014-15 season (blue line). This lack of increase over prior years was true for all seven states that did not issue stay-at-home orders. Although North Dakota did close many businesses and schools, the schools were reopened for in-person classes on June 1st 2020 for summer classes, much sooner than almost any other state, and North Dakota had no mask mandate until pressure on the governor about "increased cases" convinced him to have a temporary mandate for 2 months from mid-November 2020 to mid-January 2021 (Dawid 2021).
The lack of any increased mortality in the graph above raises obvious doubts about the efficacy of masks, social distancing and other measures, just as in South Dakota, which had similar results. "Increased cases" should only cause concern if there is an increase in mortality, and the lack thereof fits with a picture of covid-19 as a mild flu virus. The dramatic increases seen in many regions immediately after the March 2020 declaration of a pandemic was likely related to the overly aggressive pandemic response. This graph does not show any sign of a pandemic, especially when compared to places like New York City which had the most severe understaffing crisis of any region, or Michigan. Ironically both New York City and Michigan were praised by Anthony Fauci for their strict social isolation mandates.
Briand provides a graph like this for all 50 US States plus New York City, showing weekly deaths with lines of different colors for each year. The green line shows weekly mortality for North Dakota from August 2019 to August 2020, and it is very similar to all the other years, with a peak which is lower than the 2014-15 season (blue line). This lack of increase over prior years was true for all seven states that did not issue stay-at-home orders. Although North Dakota did close many businesses and schools, the schools were reopened for in-person classes on June 1st 2020 for summer classes, much sooner than almost any other state, and North Dakota had no mask mandate until pressure on the governor about "increased cases" convinced him to have a temporary mandate for 2 months from mid-November 2020 to mid-January 2021 (Dawid 2021).
The lack of any increased mortality in the graph above raises obvious doubts about the efficacy of masks, social distancing and other measures, just as in South Dakota, which had similar results. "Increased cases" should only cause concern if there is an increase in mortality, and the lack thereof fits with a picture of covid-19 as a mild flu virus. The dramatic increases seen in many regions immediately after the March 2020 declaration of a pandemic was likely related to the overly aggressive pandemic response. This graph does not show any sign of a pandemic, especially when compared to places like New York City which had the most severe understaffing crisis of any region, or Michigan. Ironically both New York City and Michigan were praised by Anthony Fauci for their strict social isolation mandates.