I invite
@IvanKaramazov 's response to the following generalities:
South Dakota has some significant geographic and cultural advantages. It is a large state with a small population. People are spread out, even in what metro-ish areas exist in SD -- I don't think people are ever packed shoulder-to-shoulder on public transportation in Sioux Falls, for example. South Dakota has no national or international travel hubs. There are no NYCs or LAs or Atlantas, Dallases, New Orleans, Miamis, etc.
Accordingly, SD has essentially been able to get away with acting locally like "COVID is over". South Dakota's Delta "surge" was very mild compared to other states, never closely approaching the case rates and death rates of the winter 2020-21 surge. Death rates never rose at all during Delta -- the 7-day-average daily death rate has remained 5 or or below since early February.
The per-capita numbers don't even really tell the story of South Dakota. An isolated town of 3,000 getting hit by 80 cases ... that looks like a flaming hot spot on Johns Hopkins map. But with the next towns 50 miles down the road, those flare-ups don't ignite huge swaths of the state. Not even an event like Sturgis, where 99% of the participants just left the isolated town for their home states anyway.
Simply put: small numbers look big when divided by small denominators. States like South Carolina and Wisconsin have had as many COVID cases as SD has
people. Massachusetts, too, with a much smaller geographic footprint.
In sum, South Dakotans haven't "felt" COVID in a long time. It's not slapping them in the face at every turn. There are probably many South Dakotans that still -- in Novermber 2021-- don't know anyone that lives around them that was personally hit hard by COVID.