Plain Talk With Rob Port

On this episode of Plain Talk Dr. Robert Redfield, the director of the Centers for Disease Control in Georgia, talks about the COVID-19 impact and how America, generally, and North Dakota, specifically, is handling it. One point Redfield made is that elected officials need to avoid making sweeping policies, instead tailoring responses to the needs of specific  areas. "We need to be more surgical," Redfield said, echoing something Governor Doug Burgum has been saying about responding to the pandemic "using a scalpel not a sledgehammer." Asked how North Dakota is doing in its handling of the outbreak, Redfield offered a risk assessment. He said the CDC considers a state in the "red zone" if it has more than 100 active cases per 100,000 citizens. "North Dakota has about 151 per 100,000," he said, though he added that another measure his agency looks at is the percentage of tests being conducted that are coming back positive. A 10 percent rate puts a state in the red zone, per the CDC. Redfield noted that North