Despite a severe outbreak of coronavirus in South Dakota that may imperil the country’s meat supply, Fox News ignored Gov. Kristi Noem’s refusal to issue a stay-at-home order and gave her a friendly platform to boast about her Trumpy hydroxychloroquine test.

Here’s how Forbes summed up the situation in South Dakota yesterday:

South Dakota, one of five remaining states yet to issue a statewide stay-at-home order, now has one of the largest coronavirus outbreaks in the United States—with 300-plus cases at the world’s biggest pork processor Smithfield Foods, raising concern about coronavirus spreading through processed meat and how South Dakota’s rural healthcare facilities will fare with the disease. 

After Smithfield Foods announced an indefinite closure on Sunday, you could bank on Roem visiting Fox for some Republican Rehab on Monday.

Neil Cavuto’s Your World show did the honors. Cavuto didn’t even mention Noem’s refusal to issue a stay-at-home order.

Cavuto called the Smithfield outbreak “weird,” as if there was nothing to account for it. Then he thoughtfully kept his mouth shut as Noem euphemistically said the plant is “taking a pause,” and claimed, “We look at the science, we look at the facts on the ground and we make wise decisions. We can’t do knee-jerk reactions that just make us feel good, we need to make decisions that actually do good. And that’s what I’ve been doing from the very beginning here in South Dakota.”

Cavuto asked if Noem was worried about the food, if it had been somehow contaminated (which she assured was not the case) and said nothing about the families of those 300+ workers nor anyone they may have come in contact with, thanks to Noem’s refusal to order residents to stay at home.

“The big news,” according to Cavuto is that South Dakota is “the first state now to start clinical trials of hydroxychloroquine.” Hydroxychloroquine is, of course, the drug that Donald Trump, his cronies and his Fox News pals have been relentlessly promoting. “I’m wondering what brought you to the level of giving it a test, seeing how it goes. Update me,” Cavuto said. He did not mention that a study in Brazil was halted over potentially fatal heart complications. Nor that a recent study showed promise for a different drug, remdesivir.

“Today we announced that we’re partnering with all three of our major health care systems in the state for the first statewide, state-backed clinical trial using hydroxy to be able to make sure that we’re protecting our citizens and treating them," Noem announced. "Those that are at high risk, our health care providers, and then also other patients in the state. So we’re set up right now to treat up to 100,000 people in the state of South Dakota and we’ll be the first statewide and state-backed and endorsed clinical trial using hydroxy in this form.”

Without mentioning the Brazil study, Cavuto asked if there are any warnings for the test subjects.

Roem didn’t answer, other than to say, participation is voluntary and that a patient and his or her doctor will decide “if it’s right for them to participate.” But, she declared, “It’ll be used for research against this disease in the future. What we’re doing in South Dakota will benefit the entire country and the world.”

Want to give Governor Noem some feedback? You can contact call her office at (605) 773-3212, write her at Office of the Governor, 500 East Capitol Avenue, Pierre, SD 57501. Or you can email her via this link.

Meanwhile, you can watch her Republican Rehab on Fox News below, from the April 13, 2020 Your World.