More than 30 states across the country have issued a stay-at-home or shelter-in-place order since the pandemic caused by the new coronavirus began. Even more have partial orders that cover specific cities or counties.

But South Dakota — along with North Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa and Arkansas — have issued no such order, placing the five Midwestern states in the minority.

"South Dakota is not New York City," Gov. Kristi Noem said in a Wednesday press conference during which she restated a belief she's made known throughout almost all of her daily press conferences: South Dakota can get through this pandemic without taking the serious action that the majority of the other states have.

© Abigail Dollins / Argus Leader Gov. Kristi Noem gives an update on the coronavirus in South Dakota on Tuesday, March 17, 2020 at the Sanford Center in Sioux Falls.

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"The calls to apply for a one-size-fits-all approach to this problem is herd mentality," Noem said during the conference. "It's not leadership."

Wednesday marked Noem's strongest expression of this notion — after briefly discussing unemployment procedures at the beginning of the press conference, Noem pivoted, saying she wanted to "touch on the role of government in a crisis situation."

She discussed the constitutions of both the country and the state, saying they prevent "draconian measures much like the Chinese government has done," and "actions we've seen European governments take that limit citizen's rights."

"Our constitution ensures that the citizen's right is protected," Noem said. "I agree with the role of our government as set forth in our state and in our national constitution."

People are 'primarily responsible' for their own safety

In that vein, while Noem has urged the importance of social distancing and hygiene again and again, she's also made it clear that she's asking South Dakotans to follow those guidelines, not telling them to.

"The people themselves are primarily responsible for their safety," Noem said. "They are the ones that are entrusted with expansive freedoms. They're free to exercise their rights to work, to worship, and to play. Or to even stay at home, or to conduct social distancing."

Noem has furthermore said that several factors about the state, primarily its rural status, put South Dakota in a better position to weather the pandemic.

More: Noem: Cities have public health powers, but counties left out in final legislative day

"Our sense of personal responsibility, our resiliency and our already sparse population density put us in a great position," she said, "to manage the spread of this virus without needing to resort to some of the measures that we've seen in some of these major cities, coastal cities and in other countries."

And at one point Noem asked South Dakotans plainly: Do you really want to stay at home?

"Now that we're looking at a peak infection date possibly into July and August," she said, "I ask everybody out there to consider the lifestyle they're living today. Can you do that until July and August? And what you're asking me to do, if I were to do that, could you live that way until July and August?"

What South Dakotans should do, she said is stay the course, adjust as needed and stop watching the national news.

"It's so important not to turn on the news and look at NYC and think that that's what Lemmon, South Dakota is going to face in a month," Noem said. "It's absolutely not true."

This article originally appeared on Sioux Falls Argus Leader: Why Gov. Noem won't order a shelter-in-place for South Dakotans