[Steve_Seattle]

"SD has a large Native American population, who are very susceptible to the China Crud."

Belated reply: You may be on to something. I looked it up, and SD has the fourth largest Native American population in the country (9.9%), whereas Vermont ranks 50th (.67%). To further investigate, I'd need to know what percentage of the SD cases and deaths were of Native Americans, but I don't know where to look that up.

[smokingfrog]

Look up the working population of SD versus Vermont. About 100K or so more in SD, I think. I’d argue that more people working will cause the virus to spread more widely.