Gov. J.B. Pritzker recently declared Illinois a Covid disaster area for the 31st consecutive 30-day period. For more than two years, the governor has invoked a “disaster” to rule by executive order. It’s what allowed him to lock down businesses, impose mask mandates, close schools and micromanage healthcare across the state.
His most recent emergency declaration of June 24, 2022 continued to use the same language: “I find that a disaster area exists within the State of Illinois and specifically declare all counties in the state of Illinois as a disaster area.”
Illinois, a disaster area? There’s nothing disastrous about it. And all counties are a disaster area? Even if you were sympathetic to Pritzker’s disaster declarations during the height of the pandemic, you’d have to admit his pronouncement is absurd today. Every major metric, from vaccinations to hospitalizations to deaths, tells us that.
- By the end of June, 78 percent of adults and nearly 90 percent of Illinoisans aged 65-plus – the most-vulnerable population to Covid – were vaccinated. In all, two-thirds of all Illinoisans are now fully vaccinated.
- Just 3 percent of ICU beds, on average, were filled with Covid patients over the past three months. It’s the same with regular hospital beds
- Illinois has averaged eight Covid deaths a day over the last three months, and even then, it’s hard to know whether they died because of Covid or with Covid. Those deaths are tragic, but they don’t make Illinois a disaster state. Illinois’ Covid deaths peaked at more than 150 deaths daily.
- 88 percent of Illinois’ 744 Covid deaths since April 1, 2022 have been over the age of 60 and the average age of those deaths has been about 75, not too distant from Illinois’ average life expectancy of 79.
- Not a single person under the age of 20 has died in the last 3.5 months.
The big question is, why does the media let the governor get away with his declaration? Why don’t they demand that House Speaker Chris Welch and Senate President Don Harmon take back power and legislate whatever COVID laws they deem necessary.
Instead, Illinois remains just one of 14 states, and the only one of our neighbors, to “manage” Covid via an emergency order.
Few other than Wirepoints seem to care that Pritzker still claims executive order powers via an emergency declaration. The media has no right to lament about threats to “democracy” – as it so often does – so long as it fails to challenge Pritzker’s disaster declarations.