UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE CENTRAL DISTRICT OF ILLINOIS SEVENTH AMENDED GENERAL ORDER 20-01
October 30, 2020
IN RE: COVID-19 PUBLIC EMERGENCY
WHEREAS the Governor of the State of Illinois has declared a public health emergency in response to the spread of COVID-19 and has subsequently placed further restrictions on some regions within the Central District of Illinois; further, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and other public health authorities have advised public and private entities to take precautions to reduce the spread of the virus and set forth measures to avoid exposure. The United States District Court for the Central District of Illinois recognizes the need to take measures to effectuate these goals, while also continuing to fulfill its mission and keep both its civil and criminal court functions operating.
NOW THEREFORE, to protect the public health, reduce the size of public gatherings, and reduce any non-essential travel, the Court hereby enters this Seventh Amended General Order 20-01 to amend the directives issued in the Sixth Amended General Order 20-01 (entered on August 14, 2020), effective immediately and until January 25, 2021, or further Order of the Court as follows:
Suspension of Jury Trials
To limit the numbers of persons whose presence is required in the federal courthouses in Peoria, Springfield, Urbana and court operations in the Rock Island Division, temporarily relocated to Davenport, Iowa, all civil and criminal jury trials are suspended effective immediately and shall be rescheduled by the presiding judge to a date after January 25, 2021. The presiding judge in cases affected by this order shall enter any appropriate orders, including findings under the Speedy Trial Act, on the docket of the individual cases. The Court finds that the time period of any continuance entered from the date of this Order through January 25, 2021, as a result of this Order, shall be excluded under the Speedy Trial Act, 18 U.S.C. § 3161(h)(7)(A), as the Court finds that the ends of justice are served by taking that action outweigh the interests of the parties and the public in a speedy trial, given the need to protect the health and safety of defendants, defense counsel, prosecutors, court staff, and the public by reducing the number of persons whose presence is required for such in-person hearings.
Suspension of Public Gatherings
All public gatherings, including Naturalization Ceremonies, at the federal courthouses in Peoria, Springfield and Urbana shall be suspended during the effective period of this Order, unless specifically authorized by the Chief Judge.
All other provisions of the Sixth Amended General Order 20-01 remain in effect.
* My mom sent me this Facebook post that she spotted earlier today…
* I sent the link to the Illinois State Board of Elections and this was their response…
[Name redacted] was sent a ballot via email on Sept 16th. We’ve contacted the Rock Island County Clerk and National Guard to make sure this is resolved.
Friday, Oct 30, 2020 - Posted by Advertising Department
[The following is a paid advertisement.]
“Among all the states, Illinois jumped to the head of the pack when it comes to the environment in 2016 with its Future Energy Jobs Act, a law creating a welcoming market for installing solar energy. But because of delays in acting on a successor law to provide new funding, the solar energy industry is leaving the state in what is being called a falling off of the “solar cliff.”
Illinois is estimated to have lost close to 3,500 solar jobs already, and 1,000 more jobs could be gone by the end of the year…
Illinois has worked hard to become a leader in green energy, attracting jobs in the industry and improving the environment. The state has become an important home to businesses installing solar energy and making use of “community development” projects, in which property owners without good access to sunlight can share projects with other property owners.
McHenry County Associate Judge Thomas A. Meyer dismissed a lawsuit Thursday morning filed by Nunda and McHenry townships’ road districts contending a new state law allowing local townships to be abolished through referendums is illegal under the Illinois Constitution. Attorney James Militello III, who represented the road districts in the suit, filed a notice of appeal of the decision Thursday. The lawsuit named Gov. JB Pritzker and McHenry County as defendants.
The road districts in their lawsuit argued that the state legislation in the matter, sponsored by state Rep. David McSweeney, R-Barrington Hills, and signed into law last year, was unconstitutional because it only applied to townships in McHenry County and nowhere else in Illinois. Their complaint alleged the law, which added a rule to the state’s Township Code that lets voters decide on whether to eliminate townships and their associated road districts in McHenry County through ballot measures, is “special or local legislation,” which is prohibited from being approved by the statehouse.
The law, Militello argued, only applied it to McHenry County because the law’s supporters intended to use the area as a test case for referendums seeking to abolish townships. McSweeney in a Thursday interview agreed that was the intent and said his goal was to eventually expand it to the rest of the state.
When opposing candidates accuse each other of lying, it’s a pretty fair bet they’re both telling the truth, at least partially.
Facts taken out of context or misrepresented are part and parcel of political campaigns, particularly in quick-hitting radio and television ads aimed at audience emotions.
Last week, Illinois Supreme Court candidate Judy Cates accused her opponent, David Overstreet, of being sympathetic to child molesters and hostile to victims based on a Fifth District appellate court decision that overturned a man’s conviction based on a “trial in absentia” issue.
“Trial in absentia” questions have nothing to do with being sympathetic or unsympathetic to criminals or victims.
But in an election year, who cares?
All that matters is winning — by any means necessary. […]
Overstreet voted to overturn a child molester’s conviction based on the judge’s mistaken decision to hold a trial for the defendant when the defendant was in the hospital. So Overstreet likes child molesters.
* Check out the mass text sent out in the district by a shadowy group opposing Overstreet…
A class action lawsuit has been filed against Republican candidate for Illinois Supreme Court David Overstreet over alleged violations of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act by a lawyer who’s a top contributor to his opponent, Democrat Judy Cates..
A law firm representing the Overstreet 2020 campaign has asked a southern Illinois TV station to stop running a trial-lawyer sponsored ad it says is “disgustingly false.”
In a 30-second spot paid for by “Clean Courts Committee,” the mother of a 6-year-old who was allegedly raped says she can’t believe Judge Overstreet would let the accused “go.”
“No charges, no registering as a sex offender. Nothing,” the mother says.
The accused, Jerad Peoples, was convicted in absentia by a Marion County judge in 2017. His conviction was overturned in June at the Fifth District Appellate Court by a three-judge panel, lead by Justice Milton Wharton. The judges found that Peoples did not miss his trial date willfully but missed it because he nearly took his life and spent the day in a hospital.
Justices David Overstreet and John Barberis concurred in the decision with Wharton.
But court records show that four years ago Cates, as appellate court justice in the same court where Overstreet serves, made a very similar concurrence in the case of a Bethalto man.
Cates, Democrat, runs against Overstreet, Republican, for the seat of retiring Justice Lloyd Karmeier.
In a Nov. 22, 2016 opinion, Cates concurred with a majority to reverse the first conviction of Michael Burgund, who upon second trial was convicted of sexually assaulting his two minor daughters between the ages of one and three.
The appellate court decision that Cates concurred in, like the one Overstreet concurred in, remanded the case back to the trial court for a second trial. The second Burgund trial took place a year and a half later, in Madison County.
The Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) today reported 6,943 new confirmed cases of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Illinois, including 36 additional deaths.
- Adams County: 1 male 90s
- Carroll County: 1 female 80s
- Christian County: 1 male 50s
- Cook County: 1 male 40s, 1 female 50s, 1 male 50s, 1 female 70s, 1 female 80s, 1 female 90s
- DuPage County: 1 male 60s, 1 female 70s
- Fulton County: 1 male 70s
- Greene County: 2 females 90s
- LaSalle County: 1 female 80s, 1 female 90s
- Livingston County: 1 male 60s
- Macon County: 1 female 70s
- Madison County: 1 male 70s
- McDonough County: 1 male 60s
- Morgan County: 1 male 80s
- Peoria County: 1 female 90s
- Piatt County: 1 female 90s
- Saline County: 1 female 70s, 1 female 90s
- St. Clair County: 1 male 70s
- Tazewell County: 1 male 60s
- Wayne County: 1 female 80s, 1 male 80s
- White County: 1 male 80s
- Will County: 2 males 70s, 1 female 80s, 2 females 90s
- Winnebago County: 1 female 70s
Currently, IDPH is reporting a total of 402,401 cases, including 9,711 deaths, in 102 counties in Illinois. The age of cases ranges from younger than one to older than 100 years. Within the past 24 hours, laboratories have reported 95,111 specimens for a total 7,637,209. As of last night, 3,092 people in Illinois were reported to be in the hospital with COVID-19. Of those, 673 patients were in the ICU and 288 patients with COVID-19 were on ventilators.
The preliminary seven-day statewide positivity for cases as a percent of total test from October 23 – October 29 is 7.3%. This is the number that IDPH has been consistently reporting in its daily releases and is calculated using total cases over total tests. Similar to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, IDPH has been using test positivity for regional mitigation metrics on its website since mid-July. Test positivity is calculated using the number of COVID-19 positive tests over total tests. On October 29, 2020, IDPH began reporting the statewide test positivity in its daily releases. The preliminary seven-day statewide test positivity from October 23, 2020 – October 29, 2020 is 8.5%.
Case positivity and test positivity rate are both relevant and offer insight into the bigger COVID-19 picture. Case positivity helps us understand whether changes in the number of confirmed cases is due to more testing or due to more infections. Whereas, test positivity accounts for repeated testing and helps us understand how the virus is spreading in the population over time.
Forty-nine counties are currently reported at a warning level – Adams, Alexander, Bond, Boone, Clark, Clay, Clinton, Coles, Crawford, Cumberland, DeKalb, Douglas, DuPage, Effingham, Ford, Franklin, Greene, Grundy, Hamilton, Henderson, Jackson, Jo Daviess, Johnson, Kane, Kendall, Knox, Lee, Macon, Marion, McHenry, Mercer, Morgan, Ogle, Perry, Pike, Randolph, Rock Island, Saline, Sangamon, Shelby, Stephenson, Wabash, Warren, Washington, Wayne, Whiteside, Will, Williamson. And Winnebago.
*All data are provisional and will change. In order to rapidly report COVID-19 information to the public, data are being reported in real-time. Information is constantly being entered into an electronic system and the number of cases and deaths can change as additional information is gathered. For health questions about COVID-19, call the hotline at 1-800-889-3931 or email dph.sick@illinois.gov.
A Chicago alderman’s warning about sudden polling place closures thanks to COVID-19 orders has a Cook County commissioner asking Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker to reassure voters a statewide closure will not be used to impact the election.
The concern was prompted when embattled Chicago Ald. Ed Burke, 14th Ward, sent a letter to constituents urging early voting to avoid sudden Election Day closures.
“Remember, thirty percent of the polling locations in the 14th Ward have been relocated due to COVID-19. With COVID-19 on the rise, the likelihood of polling place locations closing is possible, without notice, as happened in the March election,” Burke’s letter states.
That set off Cook County Commissioner Sean Morrison, a Republican from Palos Park, who called on Pritzker to tell voters he would not issue shutdown orders for Election Day gain.
“I publicly challenge the governor to assure Illinois voters he will not interfere with the November 3rd election by proclaiming an emergency COVID shutdown similar to the one he proclaimed in March,” Morrison told Illinois Review.
Commissioner Morrison’s memory is faulty. The governor did not shut down the primary, despite pressure to do so from the far left. He also didn’t order a single polling place closure.
* But I asked anyway, and Pritzker’s spokesperson Jorday Abudayyeh said “The governor is not going to stop the election from taking place,” adding, “We have given instructions to locals on how best to conduct elections in this environment and polling places are not subject to the mitigation.”
The boys and girls high school basketball seasons are on in Illinois, opening the door for other high contact sports to play this year — as well as potential lawsuits. […]
“IHSA may have their views of it, but school districts know what the rules are,” Pritzker said. “It’s unfortunate, but [school districts] would probably be taking on legal liability if they went ahead and moved beyond what the state had set as the mitigation standard.”
[IHSA Executive Director Craig Anderson] was asked about the risk of lawsuits the IHSA might potentially face.
“You know at some point, I think over the next month or whatever time frame we’ll figure out if this is a legal issue for us as an association or if it is for our schools and then we’ll have to pivot as we’ve been pivoting a number of times throughout this school year.”
It’s probably more about the schools. But we’ll see.
“The problem you are going to have is, even if you have parents sign waivers, if a kid gets [COVID-19] and then goes out and gives it to someone else, you have a potential of a lawsuit against the school district,” [Attorney Terry Ekl] said. “The basis of the lawsuit is they ignored the Illinois Department of Public Health and went ahead and allowed these kids to play.” […]
“There’s a proof issue involved here, but that doesn’t mean the school district is not going to get sued and have to engage in costly defensive litigation,” Ekl said. “Sometimes the cost of litigation exceeds the cost proven to be a damage. You win the case, and you still have to pay the cost of defense, which could be tens of thousands of dollars.” […]
“[Insurance carriers] may very well say to the school district, ‘If the department of public health is saying they are recommending you should not play basketball, and you go ahead and do it, we would negate your insurance coverage,’” Ekl said. “‘We’re telling you right now you should not engage in athletic activities that are in conflict with the Illinois Department of Public Health.’”
Ekl said a group of parents approached him last month about suing the IHSA. He said he researched the matter and ended up turning down the case, which was dismissed by a DuPage County judge Oct. 1.
I covered the courthouse beat in a previous life. The lawsuit will read something like this, “Good ol’ Hometown High fielded a basketball team in the midst of a pandemic, disregarding state medical guidelines. As a result of this negligence, athletes suffered illness, resulting in death.”
And, given the strong, consistent pronouncements of state officials, that’s a difficult argument to refute.
What’s more, the Illinois State Board of Education also Tweeted that due to liability issues schools, should think carefully before plunging ahead with the basketball season.
In terms of standing up for student-athletes, I suppose you could interpret the IHSA’s actions that way. Given the fact that athletes could possibly be exposed to infected individuals by competing with students outside their circle, the organization’s response seems less heroic.
…Adding… I meant to post this and somehow forgot. Sorry…
Chicago Public Schools will likely not play basketball this winter. The CPS sent a memo to schools on Thursday announcing that girls and boys high school and elementary school basketball is postponed until further notice and possibly moved to the spring or summer of 2021.
“While the Illinois High School Association has not removed high school basketball from its winter sports calendar, [Gov. J.B. Pritzker] and [the Illinois Department of Public Health] have determined that basketball presents a greater risk of COVID-19 transmission and is not safe to play this winter,” the email from CPS said.
Governor Pritzker and the Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) are announcing COVID-19 resurgence mitigations will be implemented in Region 6—East-Central Illinois—beginning at 12:01 a.m. on Monday, November 2, 2020. The region has seen a 7-day rolling average test positivity rate of 8 percent or above for three consecutive days, which exceeds the thresholds set for establishing mitigation measures under the state’s Restore Illinois Resurgence Plan. Region 6 includes Iroquois, Ford, Dewitt, Piatt, Champaign, Vermillion, Macon, Moultrie, Douglas, Edgar, Shelby, Coles, Cumberland, Clark, Fayette, Effingham, Jasper, Crawford, Clay, Richland, and Lawrence counties.
The administration continues to provide relief for small businesses impacted by the ongoing pandemic, distributing more than $32 million in emergency grants and assistance to Region 6 alone. Moving forward, businesses in Region 6, as well as other regions currently under additional mitigations, will receive priority consideration for the current round of the historic Business Interruption Grants (BIG) program. To date, through BIG, more than $42 million has been directed to regions currently under mitigations or where mitigations will soon take effect. These programs are guided by an equity framework and seek to address the hardest hit communities with emergency relief dollars.
“As of this morning, Region 6 has now sustained an average positivity rate of 8 percent or higher for three days, today hitting 8.6 percent – meaning that, starting Monday, they will join the majority of the state in operating under resurgence mitigations,” said Governor JB Pritzker. “With community transmission rates on the rise all around our state, it’s more important than ever to take caution, mask up, avoid gatherings and ensure your family gets through this as safe as can be. Let’s remember that the quickest way we get kids back into schools and businesses open and workers employed is to bring down infections, positivity rates, and hospitalizations in our communities – and that means mask up, wash up, back up, and sleeve up to get your flu shot.”
“We are on the precipice of the entire state entering into mitigation,” said IDPH Director Dr. Ngozi Ezike. “These last few regions have seen rapid increases in test positivity, one right after another, because of increasing disease spread throughout our communities. We need all people to adhere to both the community mitigation measures and well as personal and family measures so we can swiftly turn our entire state around.”
Mitigation measures taking effect November 2 in Region 6 include:
Bars
No indoor service
All outside bar service closes at 11:00 p.m.
All bar patrons should be seated at tables outside
No ordering, seating, or congregating at bar (bar stools should be removed)
Tables should be 6 feet apart
No standing or congregating indoors or outdoors while waiting for a table or exiting
No dancing or standing indoors
Reservations required for each party
No seating of multiple parties at one table
Restaurants
No indoor dining or bar service
All outdoor dining closes at 11:00 p.m.
Outside dining tables should be 6 feet apart
No standing or congregating indoors or outdoors while waiting for a table or exiting
Reservations required for each party
No seating of multiple parties at one table
Meetings, Social Events, Gatherings
Limit to lesser of 25 guests or 25 percent of overall room capacity
No party buses
Gaming and Casinos close at 11:00 p.m., are limited to 25 percent capacity, and follow mitigations for bars and restaurants, if applicable
These mitigations do not apply to schools or polling places.
From the onset of the pandemic, support for small businesses has been one of the central features of the Pritzker administration’s COVID-19 response. Since March, the administration has launched a menu of small business and community relief programs – with over $500 million in grants and programs launched by the Illinois Department for Economic Opportunity (DCEO), including emergency hospitality grants, a downstate small business stabilization program, Fast Track Capital, and more. For more information on programs available for businesses and communities, please visit DCEO’s website.
DCEO is also actively processing reimbursements for local governments impacted by COVID-19 via the state’s Local CURES program. Thus far, nearly $5 million has been awarded to governments in Region 6 to help cover the costs of the emergency response, with eligible costs including PPE and other public health expenses. All eligible governments in Region 6 can submit their certification to the department and begin submitting reimbursement requests. For more information on programs available for businesses and communities, please visit DCEO’s website.
Region 6 is currently seeing an 8.6% positivity rate, an increase from 5.2% in mid-September, a summer peak of 6.2% over Labor Day weekend, and a low of 1.1% in late-June. While nearly every region is seeing sustained increases in both positivity and hospitalization rates, today the COVID-related hospital admissions in Region 6 have tripled since mid-September now averaging 18 admissions per day.
In the coming days, IDPH will continue to track the positivity rate in Region 6 to determine if mitigations can be relaxed, if additional mitigations are required, or if current mitigations should remain in place. If the positivity rate averages less than or equal to 6.5% for three consecutive days, then the regions will return to Phase 4 mitigations under the Restore Illinois Plan. If the positivity rate averages between 6.5% and 8%, the new mitigations will remain in place and unchanged. If the positivity rate averages greater than or equal to 8% after 14 days, more stringent mitigations may be applied to further reduce spread of the virus.
Every region is being closely monitored since as of today, including Region 6, a total of ten of the state’s 11 regions have triggered one of the state’s failsafe state-action metric. Regions 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, and 9 will all operate under Tier 1 mitigation measures by the end of this weekend, given that these regions continue to report a 7-day rolling positivity rate above 8%. Regions 10 and 11 are now operating under Tier 1 mitigations after triggering additional mitigations based on sustained increases in both positivity and hospitalization rates. Region 1 is currently operating under Tier 2 mitigation measures after continuing to see a rise in positivity even under the Tier 1 mitigation framework, with the highest rolling positivity average in the state.
As part of the administration’s robust response to the pandemic, the state continues to strengthen its nation-leading testing operation. Today, Illinois reported a record high of 95,111 tests in a single day. The administration is building upon this groundbreaking progress, given that testing remains a critical step to reduce further spread of the virus. For a more targeted approach, the state provides mobile testing allowing testing to be directed toward communities most impacted by COVID-19. In Region 6, mobile testing has been deployed in Richland County today, in Effingham on Sunday, and in Macon at the Decatur Civic Center from today through Sunday. Next week, Region 6 will have a testing site from November 2 through November 8 at the Danville Area Community College. To find the nearest testing center, please visit DPH.Illinois.Gov/Testing.
IDPH will continue to work closely with local health departments in Region 6 to provide education to the public and offer information to businesses and organizations on keeping residents safe. The significance of face coverings, social distancing, and hand washing have been consistently emphasized by the administration throughout the pandemic.
A full list of mitigation measures pertaining to some businesses and industries may be found
*** UPDATE *** The entire state will likely be in mitigation in a few days…
UPDATE: Region 2, including #Peoria, has just recorded its first day with a positivity rate over 8% — reaching 8.5% in numbers released today. If those numbers stay above 8% for two more days, the restrictions linked earlier in this thread will apply here.
Lab tests from wells near Nicor Gas’ oldest underground natural gas storage facility detected alarming levels of benzene, a chemical known to cause cancer.
In a violation notice issued in December 2019, the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency alleged the state’s largest natural gas company broke the law and threatened the quality of groundwater when it dumped the carcinogenic wastewater into the soil.
Federal safety standards set the limit of benzene at five parts per billion. According to lab tests obtained in a Target 3 investigation, the benzene found in eight Nicor Gas wells exceeded federal safety standards for three consecutive months. One test conducted in February of 2019 detected 26,000 parts of benzene per billion, an astounding 5,200 times higher than legally allowed.
In an emailed statement, the company said it discovered benzene during regular monthly testing and reported it immediately the state’s environmental regulators.
“Nicor Gas and the IEPA have been unable to identify the source of the benzene,” spokeswoman Jennifer Golz wrote on Wednesday. “Benzene is not a chemical that we use in our processes.”
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, benzene “is a natural part of crude oil, gasoline,” and is a widely produced industrial chemical often associated with underground storage sites.
Gas companies like Nicor, a subsidiary of Southern Company Gas, routinely pipe fracked gas in from out of state before storing it deep underground in naturally occurring aquifers. Industry experts say the chemical liquids used in hydraulic fracturing are often kept secret as proprietary information, but several health studies and news reports have documented widespread use of benzene in fracking fluids
I saw your mention of the WCIA article about Nicor Gas, and I wanted to let you and your readers know that this downstate television station did not attempt to factcheck its reporting, nor has made the factual corrections Nicor Gas has requested. Therefore, I am reaching out to you directly to ensure you know that all Nicor Gas storage facilities are safe and in compliance with local, state and federal environmental standards and guidelines.
WCIA is presenting factually inaccurate information about the operation of our storage facilities in a misleading and irresponsible manner that alarms those in our state who rely on Nicor Gas to keep their families safe, homes warm and businesses running.
There are several inaccuracies in the WCIA report including assertions that Nicor Gas “dumped” contaminated water without regard. All produced water was discharged legally in seepage fields permitted by the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency for more than 20 years. The presence of benzene was not identified in any of the company’s routine monitoring and analytical tests until 2018. Nicor Gas was first to detect the benzene, and we immediately reported this to the IEPA and implemented proactive corrective actions to stop benzene discharge, including disposal of the produced water in appropriate and permitted disposal facilities.
It’s important to note, as we have also shared with WCIA, that benzene is not used by Nicor or in natural gas operations. Its presence is not an effect of our work or processes.
The source of the benzene is still unknown. However, as soon as it was identified, Nicor Gas immediately shut in the extraction well where benzene was detected despite the challenges it would present to operations and distributing natural gas to our customers during the winter heating season. These events were happening during the same time as last year’s Polar Vortex. Without the added capacity of our underground storage, more than 700,000 customers would have been without heat during the dangerously cold temperatures.
If you’d like to learn more about how our storage ensures we are able to safely and reliability meet the energy needs of Illinoisans, I encourage you to visit https://www.nicorgas.com/storage.
Thank you for your time and consideration to help set the record straight.
Jennifer
Jennifer Golz
Manager, PR & Media Relations
Corporate Communications
Rep. Mike Murphy, R-Springfield, a former restaurant owner, said during a briefing with state health officials Thursday that lawmakers were told private gatherings and universities pose a bigger transmission problem than bars and restaurants. He, too, wants to see the data Pritzker is using to determine the mitigations.
Pritzker has said that information will be made available early next week. He said it’s taken time to compile records from nearly 100 separate local health agencies.
Murphy said if “it proved to be that restaurants and bars were the reason why we cannot control the spread of this, yes I would (support the mitigations). But I haven’t seen that proved, and I’m not sure they have it.”
“There has been no data that says there has been an outbreak linked to bars and restaurants,” Bourne added.
* I told subscribers about this earlier today, but it’s important enough that I think we should go over it here now. This IDPH data is for Region 3 (which includes Springfield) through a couple weeks ago. Expect an update very soon…
“Other”…
‘Other’ means locations not selected from the 37 standard locations available to the contact tracing workers. These locations include vacation, frat house, library, fire department and a variety of other venues and may include non- responses.
As you may recall, Rep. Tim Butler, who was also at yesterday’s HGOP press conference, said he had no idea how he caught the COVID. He’s therefore an “other.”
There’s exposure data, and then there’s outbreak data. Those are two different pieces of data that are collected.
As the governor explained, the outbreak data will be where all of these individuals in the same space and time were diagnosed as cases and they’re connected to one another clearly. There’s a connection like ‘I was with you. And I developed symptoms, we were in this space,’ and these people were all connected. So that could be at a fraternity party, that could be at a wedding. Those were clearly identified outbreaks.
Most people who end up contracting the infection don’t know exactly who they got it from. They don’t say, ‘Oh, I was with so and so who was positive, that’s where I got it’. If they don’t have any idea of who they got it from, then that’s when you go into the contact tracing, in terms of identifying places that they were in the time that you would have contracted the virus.
And so from that data that you collect from all these people who were just like, ‘Well, I was here, I was there,’ it is consistent that where those people recollect that they were in the time, were bars and restaurants. Obviously, if people were in school, they will say school people who were at work will say work.
So, we already told you we’re not the ones who are going to be closing school, we’re not going to tell people not to go to work. We have to operate in the place that we can operate. And there you have, sitting there, bars and restaurants coming up time after time in the exposure sites that people were before they contracted the virus.
* People should either get off Facebook or unfollow goofs like this…
Voters — Please beware of incorrect information in your social media like this Facebook post. When you vote, the election judge will initial your ballot in the space marked "Judge's Initials." This has been part of the process for many decades. pic.twitter.com/px4snP7uvx
A Chicago doctor took the podium during Thursday’s coronavirus press briefing to ‘set some facts straight’ on misinformation being spread amid a surge in coronavirus cases across Illinois.
Dr. Emily Landon, an infectious disease expert at University of Chicago Medicine, told media while she’s worried about the record high 6,363 coronavirus cases set on Thursday, she’s also worried about ‘misinformation and fatigue’ that she says has grown across the state.
“Today, I want to set some facts straight,” Landon began. “First of all, inconsistent recommendations are not evidence of a conspiracy, nor are inconsistent data. They’re evidence of a changing knowledge and epidemiology.” […]
“In different situations, different metrics mean different things,” Landon said. “For example, when testing rates are low or changing rapidly, the test positivity rate may not mean quite the same thing as when testing rates are stable, or when the testing rates aren’t increasing as much as the cases.” […]
“There are new data coming out every day. Science is learning,” Landon assured. “We change our guidance, because we learn something new. Changing advice should make you feel good that we’re making progress.”
There has been widespread disagreement about the ban on indoor dining in the Metro East, and other places in Illinois. Dr. Landon said the last time the ban was imposed, it worked in stopping the increase in positivity rates.
As temperatures cool down, more people have moved to dining indoors, which Landon said is a major spreading spot of the coronavirus. She said “there’s no way around” Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s recent order to shut down indoor bar service and dining in most regions in Illinois.
“Over 100 (coronavirus) cases were linked to one bar in Michigan in a week. And over the summer in Minnesota, 29 bars and restaurants started clusters that spread throughout the community” Landon said. “Shutting down bars and restaurants and putting in mass mandates changed the trajectory of the pandemic in Arizona, Texas, Florida, San Diego, Washington, DC, Illinois, I could go on.”
Officials said the major issue with bars and restaurants is the need to remove a mask in order to eat or drink, which could lead to a further spread of the coronavirus.
Landon said the spreading is not the fault of any particular restaurant, but rather that the spread is inevitable. She reminded that people with the coronavirus are contagious before experiencing symptoms.
“The reality is, that restaurant can be perfectly safe from 6 to 8 p.m. and become a super spreader event from 8 to 10,” Landon said. “It all depends on whether or not someone with COVID walks in the door.”
Dr. Emily Landon, a medical director at the University of Chicago’s medical school, said two factors facilitate the virus’s spread in winter, especially at restaurants: Colder air is drier, and the droplets that transmit the virus become even smaller.
Add to that, she said, what people do in a bar or restaurant.
“There are only a couple activities where you have to take your masks off around other people, and that is dining in a restaurant and going to a bar,” Landon noted. “There is just no way to escape the risks (of COVID-19) when you go into a restaurant.”
New data comes in every day as science continues to learn, Landon said, which can lead to disagreements, but disagreements are a normal part of the scientific process.
“We change our guidance because we learn something new,” she explained. “Changing advice should make you feel good about our making progress. Disagreement is a normal part of every process, and there is no right way to handle a new pandemic. But we’re all in the same boat and we should try to row in the same direction as much as possible.” […]
Landon said studies have found that indoor ventilation in most buildings is not enough to prevent COVID-19 transmission without masks. That is one of the reasons bars and restaurants carry a higher risk of transmission; it’s not possible to eat and drink while wearing a face covering.
The governor said his decisions were guided by models done by research experts which show when we might see spikes, including one developed by University of Chicago scientist Sarah Cobey.
While she wasn’t available for an interview Thursday, Cobey was recently quoted in the downstate Belleville News-Democrat questioning the governor’s reliance on the positivity rate.
“I have been very critical of their use of this metric and basically almost all of the metrics they’ve proposed so far because they are not scientifically founded,” the paper quoted Cobey as saying. “They’re roughly right, but they’re not metrics you want to hang your hat on.”
In the article, Cobey argues the metric is only useful if there is enough testing happening in a region. A high positivity rate in an area which averages very few tests may not be indicative of how widespread the virus has become.
During Thursday’s daily coronavirus briefing, University of Chicago Dr. Emily Landon praised Cobey as a world-class scientist, but said the governor makes his decisions based on a variety of information.
“In a pandemic, no one has a monopoly on expertise,” Landon said.
Thirty-seven restaurants and bars in McHenry County filed suit Thursday against Gov. J.B. Pritzker and health officials, trying to prevent enforcement of an order to shut down indoor service, which is meant to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.
A hearing was set in the matter for Friday, one day before the shutdown was scheduled to take place in Lake and McHenry counties. A similar order has been imposed in Cook, DuPage, Kane, Kankakee and Will counties, and other parts of Illinois. […]
He based the legal challenge in part on the state law that gives the governor power to issue executive orders in an emergency, as Pritzker first did in March, but limits that power to 30 days. Some courts previously have upheld the governor’s power to issue consecutive orders to extend that time period indefinitely, but a downstate judge ruled this summer that the governor may not do so, a case that the state is also appealing.
Five Park Ridge restaurant owners filed a lawsuit this week against Gov. J.B. Pritzker, objecting to the governor’s latest order shutting down indoor dining at bars and restaurants.
The lawsuit, filed in Cook County Circuit Court late Wednesday, claims Pritzker lacks the authority to issue the executive order because the emergency powers he used to issue it expired in April.
Just a ridiculous assertion.
*** UPDATE 1 *** Sam Toia of the Illinois Restaurant Association announced today that his group will develop a standard amicus brief so that it can weigh in on lawsuits as they are filed.
*** UPDATE 2 *** Welp…
A McHenry County judge denied a temporary restraining order Friday filed by 37 local bars and restaurants can remain open despite the governor’s mitigation rules that take effect Saturday.
Attorneys met Friday morning at the McHenry County courthouse in Woodstock, where they argued primarily about Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker’s powers or lackthereof to enforce consecutive 30-day executive orders.
McHenry County Judge Thomas Meyer said that he ruled that way because he felt that the new mitigation orders were based on new facts and were not simply an extension of Pritzker’s original executive order.
*** UPDATE 3 *** The attorney general’s office tells me that judges in DuPage and Cook counties today also denied TRO motions filed by restaurant plaintiffs.
* My initial, private reaction to this announcement would not be allowed on this website…
Tony La Russa, a member of baseball’s Hall of Fame, the third-winningest manager in baseball history, a three-time World Series champion and a four-time winner of the Manager of the Year Award, has been named the new manager of the Chicago White Sox. pic.twitter.com/RKP24rleHP
* Three days in a row of a positivity rate at or above 8 percent leads to IDPH mitigation, and Region 3 has hit that point. The region runs from eastern Sangamon County over to the Mississippi River and as far south as Calhoun County.
* Press release…
The Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) today reported 6,363 new confirmed cases of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Illinois, including 56 additional deaths.
- Adams County: 1 male 70s
- Christian County: 1 male 80s
- Clark County: 1 female 80s
- Clay County: 1 female 70s
- Clinton County: 1 female 90s, 1 male 90s
- Cook County: 1 male 40s, 3 females 60s, 1 male 60s, 1 female 70s, 1 male 70s, 1 female 80s, 2 males 80s, 1 female 90s, 2 males 90s
- DeKalb County: 1 male 80s
- DuPage County; 1 female 40s, 1 female 80s
- Edgar County: 1 male 70s
- Ford County: 1 female 70s
- Kane County: 2 males 60s, 1 female 70s
- Lake County: 1 female 80s, 2 females 90s, 1 male 90s
- LaSalle County: 2 females 90s
- Livingston County: 1 female 70s
- Macon County: 1 male 30s
- Marion County: 1 male 70s, 1 female 80s, 1 male 80s
- McDonough County: 1 male 60s
- Morgan County: 1 male 60s
- Ogle County: 1 male 60s
- Rock Island County: 1 male 70s, 1 female 90s
- St. Clair County: 1 female 60s, 1 female 80s
- Tazewell County: 1 male 70s, 1 male 90s
- Wabash County: 1 male 70s
- Wayne County: 1 male 90s
- Will County: 1 male 70s, 1 female 80s, 2 males 80s
- Winnebago County: 1 male 70s, 1 male 80s, 1 male 90s
Currently, IDPH is reporting a total of 395,458 cases, including 9,675 deaths, in 102 counties in Illinois. The age of cases ranges from younger than one to older than 100 years. Within the past 24 hours, laboratories have reported 83,056 specimens for a total 7,542,098. As of last night, 3,030 people in Illinois were reported to be in the hospital with COVID-19. Of those, 643 patients were in the ICU and 269 patients with COVID-19 were on ventilators.
The preliminary seven-day statewide positivity for cases as a percent of total test from October 22 – October 28 is 6.9%. This is the number that IDPH has been consistently reporting in its daily releases and is calculated using total cases over total tests. Similar to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, IDPH has been using test positivity for regional mitigation metrics on its website since mid-July. Test positivity is calculated using the number of COVID-19 positive tests over total tests. Beginning October 29, 2020, IDPH is reporting the statewide test positivity in its daily releases. The preliminary seven-day statewide test positivity from October 22, 2020 – October 28, 2020 is 8.2%.
Case positivity and test positivity rate are both relevant and offer insight into the bigger COVID-19 picture. Case positivity helps us understand whether changes in the number of confirmed cases is due to more testing or due to more infections. Whereas, test positivity accounts for repeated testing and helps us understand how the virus is spreading in the population over time.
*All data are provisional and will change. In order to rapidly report COVID-19 information to the public, data are being reported in real-time. Information is constantly being entered into an electronic system and the number of cases and deaths can change as additional information is gathered. For health questions about COVID-19, call the hotline at 1-800-889-3931 or email dph.sick@illinois.gov.
…Adding… Press release…
Governor Pritzker and the Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) are announcing COVID-19 resurgence mitigations will be implemented in Region 3—West-Central Illinois—beginning at 12:01 a.m. on Sunday, November 1, 2020. The region has seen a 7-day rolling average test positivity rate of 8 percent or above for three consecutive days, which exceeds the thresholds set for establishing mitigation measures under the state’s Restore Illinois Resurgence Plan. Region 3 includes Hancock, Adams, Pike, Calhoun, Jersey, Greene, Scott, Brown, Schuyler, Cass, Morgan, Macoupin, Montgomery, Christian, Sangamon, Logan, Menard, and Mason counties.
The administration continues to provide relief for small businesses impacted by the ongoing pandemic. Today, the administration announced that through both the historic Business Interruption Grants (BIG) program and Local CURE funding, a total of $94 million has already been deployed to Illinois businesses and communities to help offset costs and losses due to the pandemic. In Region 3 alone, nearly $40 million in emergency grants and assistance has been awarded via both programs. Moving forward, businesses in Region 3, as well as other regions currently under additional mitigations, will receive priority consideration for the current round of BIG. These programs are guided by an equity framework and seek to address the hardest hit communities with emergency relief dollars.
“As of this morning, Region 3 – which encompasses Quincy, Springfield and much of West-Central Illinois – has now sustained an average positivity rate of 8 percent or higher for three days, today hitting 8.8 percent – meaning that, starting Sunday, they will join the majority of the state in operating under resurgence mitigations,” said Governor JB Pritzker. “Something has got to give, and these mitigations aim to cut down on those high-risk activities until we bring down the positivity rate in an area once again. Because let’s be clear: well-meaning and reasonable people can have fair disagreements about how and where to draw lines and connect dots – but when every single metric in every single corner of the state is trending poorly, we have to take meaningful action to keep our people safe.”
“This is the first time a central Illinois region has needed to implement mitigation measures because of increasing positivity,” said IDPH Director Dr. Ngozi Ezike. “For those residents living in regions and communities where the virus didn’t seem to be ‘that bad,’ things are changing with positivity rates steadily increasing. We’ve seen regions move into and then out of mitigation, so we know the measures work. The more people adhere to the measures, the quicker we can move out of mitigation.”
Mitigation measures taking effect November 1 in Region 3 include:
Bars
No indoor service
All outside bar service closes at 11:00 p.m.
All bar patrons should be seated at tables outside
No ordering, seating, or congregating at bar (bar stools should be removed)
Tables should be 6 feet apart
No standing or congregating indoors or outdoors while waiting for a table or exiting
No dancing or standing indoors
Reservations required for each party
No seating of multiple parties at one table
Restaurants
No indoor dining or bar service
All outdoor dining closes at 11:00 p.m.
Outside dining tables should be 6 feet apart
No standing or congregating indoors or outdoors while waiting for a table or exiting
Reservations required for each party
No seating of multiple parties at one table
Meetings, Social Events, Gatherings
Limit to lesser of 25 guests or 25 percent of overall room capacity
No party buses
Gaming and Casinos close at 11:00 p.m., are limited to 25 percent capacity, and follow mitigations for bars and restaurants, if applicable
These mitigations do not apply to schools or polling places.
From the onset of the pandemic, support for small businesses has been one of the central features of the Pritzker administration’s COVID-19 response. Since March, the administration has launched a menu of small business and community relief programs – with over $500 million in grants and programs launched by the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity (DCEO), including emergency hospitality grants, a downstate small business stabilization program, Fast Track Capital, and more. For more information on programs available for businesses and communities, please visit DCEO’s website.
DCEO is also actively processing reimbursements for local governments impacted by COVID-19 via the state’s Local CURES program. To date, more than $8.5 million has been awarded to governments in Region 3 to help cover the costs of the emergency response, with eligible costs including PPE and other public health expenses. All eligible governments in Region 3 can submit their certification to the department and begin submitting reimbursement requests. For more information on programs available for businesses and communities, please visit DCEO’s website.
Region 3 is currently seeing an 8.8 percent positivity rate, an increase from 4.6 percent in September, a summer peak of 6.2 percent in August, and a low of 0.9 percent in June. While most regions are seeing sustained increases in both positivity and hospitalization rates, today Region 3 is experiencing triple the amount of COVID-related hospital admissions since early September.
In the coming days, IDPH will continue to track the positivity rate in Region 3 to determine if mitigations can be relaxed, if additional mitigations are required, or if current mitigations should remain in place. If the positivity rate averages less than or equal to 6.5% for three consecutive days, then the regions will return to Phase 4 mitigations under the Restore Illinois Plan. If the positivity rate averages between 6.5% and 8%, the new mitigations will remain in place and unchanged. If the positivity rate averages greater than or equal to 8% after 14 days, more stringent mitigations may be applied to further reduce spread of the virus.
As of today, including Region 3, a total of nine of the state’s 11 regions have triggered one of the state’s failsafe state-action metric. Regions 4, 5, 7, 8, and 9 will all soon operate under Tier 1 mitigation measures given that these regions continue to report a 7-day rolling positivity rate above 8 percent. By tomorrow, Regions 10 and 11 will both operate under Tier 1 mitigations given that these regions triggered additional mitigations based on sustained increases in both positivity and hospitalization rates. Region 1 is currently operating under Tier 2 mitigation measures after continuing to see a rise in positivity, even under the Tier 1 mitigation framework, with the highest rolling positivity average in the state.
As part of the administration’s robust response to the pandemic, the state continues to strengthen its nation-leading testing operation, given that testing remains a critical step to reduce further spread of the virus. Testing is readily available throughout Illinois, with the state now averaging more than 72,000 tests per day. For a more targeted approach, the state provides mobile testing allowing testing to be directed toward communities most impacted by COVID-19. In Region 3, mobile sites will be at the Sangamon County Health Department this weekend. To find the nearest testing center, please visit DPH.Illinois.Gov/Testing.
IDPH will continue to work closely with local health departments in Region 3 to provide education to the public and offer information to businesses and organizations on safe ways to reopen. The significance of face coverings, social distancing, and hand washing have been consistently emphasized by the administration throughout the pandemic.
A full list of mitigation measures pertaining to some businesses and industries may be found on the DCEO website at www.dceocovid19resources.com/restore-illinois.
* The Gaming Board badly botched the rollout of video poker. And now…
Developers and mayors vying for the chance to break ground on new casinos — including two in Chicago’s suburbs — will have to wait at least another six months to find out if they’re holding a winning hand.
Illinois Gaming Board administrator Marcus Fruchter blamed the COVID-19 pandemic for pushing back his agency’s timeline for handing out the first round of casino licenses as part of Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s massive statewide gambling expansion.
“Like all government agencies and private businesses, the board’s work has been impacted by COVID-19,” Fruchter said at a special Gaming Board meeting held virtually Thursday. “This is not an excuse or a crutch. It is simply a recognition of the realities that work and life are different in a global pandemic.” […]
Under state law, the Gaming Board was required to issue new licenses within a year or else give a written explanation for the holdup.
This isn’t like cannabis where the government was dealing with a brand new industry and was flooded with applications. They have zero excuses.
According to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., over 80 million Americans are underbanked or unbanked — about a quarter of the country.
Consider that many people who received $1,200 COVID-19 relief checks under the CARES Act then had to pay a fee just to cash them because they didn’t have a bank account — government checks with no chance they’d bounce. So payday lenders and currency exchanges continued to extract money from the people who can least afford to lose that extra cash.
We’ve mentioned before that the U.S. Postal Service could conceivably step in and offer those basic banking services — check cashing, money orders, bill payments, and even short-term loans — in a bid to fill a basic need and undercut predators like payday lenders.
The federal government moves slowly, however, and there’s something similar we could do more immediately on the state level in Illinois to fill the same void.
Have Secretary of State offices, like driver’s license facilities, offer those additional banking services as well.
They already handle cash; they have vaults. Their frontline workers already handle incredibly sensitive information, even dealing with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, so you’re talking about a pretty sophisticated workforce. The Secretary of State Office has its own fleet of vehicles — and own police. It has the scale to deal with the assignment — with license facilities in urban areas and rural communities, both of which have been hard hit by consolidation in the banking industry. The Secretary of State has dozens of locations across the state, and while some are closed in the pandemic, the vast majority are open and dealing with driver’s licenses and tests.
According to banking expert Mehrsa Baradaran, low-income households spend up to 10 percent of their annual income drawing on financial services. This extraction reduces incomes and robs them of future wealth.
The alternative financial services industry extracts $100 billion annually, with payday lenders commonly charging what ends up being multiple times whatever small loan was originally taken out as fees and interest accumulate. This is money that’s not going to rent, food, consumer goods, or flowing through the local economy.
* From a CDC Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report last month…
Findings from a case-control investigation of symptomatic outpatients from 11 U.S. health care facilities found that close contact with persons with known COVID-19 or going to locations that offer on-site eating and drinking options were associated with COVID-19 positivity. Adults with positive SARS-CoV-2 test results were approximately twice as likely to have reported dining at a restaurant than were those with negative SARS-CoV-2 test results.
All across Kane County, like much the rest of the region, bars and restaurants are once again shut down to indoor dining and limited to patio seating, takeout and delivery only.
But not Geneva’s FoxFire. The steakhouse is serving its patrons indoors, after a judge ruled they can keep their dining room open for now — going against Governor Pritzker’s executive order.
“We’re not suing to be maskless,” said K.C. Gulbro, owner of FoxFire Tavern. “We’re not suing to fill the whole restaurant to door to door. But we feel we have the right to be open.”
The judge’s ruling only applies to FoxFire. That’s why the Illinois Restaurant Association is expected to vote as early as Thursday on whether to file a lawsuit on behalf of all of the state’s 25,000 restaurants.
* Also, have a look…
Can’t say enough about how smart and accessible and clear this El Pais explainer is…
Airborne transmission of Covid-19: A room, a bar and a class: how the coronavirus is spread through the air https://t.co/pCva6rKgYC
* Every election around this time we get flooded with first-time commenters who just want to leave drive-bys and whine about the rules. From last night…
* I do not for the life of me understand why people sit on numbers this long. The poll of 895 registered voters was taken September 26 through October 4. The surveys were conducted both on the phone and online. Margin of error was +/- 3.28 percentage points…
While Chicagoans share many concerns over the city’s policing practices, 79% want the police to spend the same amount of time or more in their neighborhoods. That’s one of the key findings of a new Wirepoints/Real Clear Opinion Research poll that looked at a range of attitudes in Chicago on policing, race and Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s performance.
The desire for more police holds true across the city’s North (76%), South (80%) and West Sides (85%), as well as across whites (79%), blacks (77%) and Hispanics (87%). Only 15% of blacks and 10% of Hispanics citywide said they want the police to spend less time in their neighborhoods.
The poll surveyed 895 registered voters in Chicago from September 26th through October 4th using a mixed phone and online methodology.
Over three-quarters (76%) of surveyed Chicagoans reported they strongly support or somewhat support Black Lives Matter. However, that support has not translated into a desire for cutting down the number of police or abolishing the Chicago Police Department (CPD). Instead, Chicagoans strongly indicate they want more and better-quality policing instead.
When asked directly if they supported defunding the police, over half (51%) of Chicagoans were opposed, with only 39% in favor. Among black residents, opposition (46%) to defunding slightly exceeded support (45%).
And while 26% of Chicagoans would be more likely to vote for city council members that support disbanding the police – a larger 37% would be less likely to vote for them.
“George Floyd’s death and the subsequent protests expanded the influence of Black Lives Matter across the country, including in Chicago,” says Ted Dabrowski, President of Wirepoints. “However, while a vast number of Chicagoans support BLM, a majority of residents – black, white and Hispanic – want more police in their neighborhoods.”
Those surveyed were also very clear in their desire for better-quality policing. Half (51%) of all Chicagoans polled said they believe the Chicago Police Department is currently handling its job badly. More than six out of ten black residents (63%) held that view.
Finally, the poll found that while Mayor Lori Lightfoot continues to hold a high overall approval rating (61%), her performance rating drops considerably on issues relating to race and public safety.
Some of the main poll results include:
• Nearly 80% of respondents wanted the police to spend the same amount of time or more in their neighborhoods. The desire for more police held true across the city’s North (76%), South (80%) and West Sides (85%), as well as across whites (79%), blacks (77%) and Hispanics (87%).
• Black Chicagoans are the most supportive of Black Lives Matter (86%), followed by whites (74%) and then Hispanics (61%).
• Only 39% of Chicagoans said they supported defunding the police, while 51% were opposed. Opposition to defunding exceeded support in the North, South and West Sides, with North Side residents expressing the most opposition (57% oppose/ 36% support)
• By race, whites and Hispanics were most opposed to politicians supporting disbanding the CPD, with 43% and 41% saying they would be less likely to vote for a council member that pushed disbanding, respectively.
• More than half of citizens from the North Side (54%) and the West Side (51%) said the CPD was doing a good or excellent job, while only 32% of voters from the South Side said the same.
• 61% of respondents approve of the job Mayor Lightfoot is doing. Chicago’s white residents gave her the highest marks (68%), followed by blacks (63%) and then Hispanics (48%).
• Lightfoot’s approval numbers drop on individual policy issues related to race and public safety: public safety (46%), racial justice (44%), police reform (39%) and gun violence (31%).
* The poll of Chicagoans found Gov. JB Pritzker’s job approval at 63 percent and disapproval at 31 percent, which is basically the same as Mayor Lightfoot’s. Toplines are here. Lightfoot is not doing well on budget and tax issues, either. Crosstabs are here.
With new COVID-19 mitigation measures announced, my colleagues and I are continuing to advocate for the small bars and restaurants that make up an integral part of our districts. Read our letter to Mayor Lightfoot and Governor Pritzker below: pic.twitter.com/KsmoFW7SG7
*** UPDATE *** The governor has sent a letter in response…
Thank you for your October 28, 2020 letter regarding the impact of the second COVID-19 wave on independent businesses, especially restaurants. We agree that small businesses are the lifeblood of our economy and COVID is having a devastating impact on them and the entire economy.
The restrictions are necessary as cases, hospitalizations and deaths are rising and will not subside without mitigations. We are glad to have created the Business Interruption Grant (“BIG”) program to support small businesses through these difficult times. We have already expedited BIG grants to businesses affected by resurgence mitigations with $220 million available in the latest round. We have already distributed 1,900 grants to taverns and restaurants across the state and 630 of those grants in Chicago. Of those 630 Chicago grants, 195 were granted in your respective districts, totaling over $3.4 million dollars of direct state investment.
We have been a vocal and active in our advocacy for more support from the federal government directly to bars and restaurants. None of the Republican U.S. Representatives have indicated a willingness to support any new resources to support the impacts of COVID on bars and restaurants- let alone any other industry in Illinois.
In Winnebago County, at the north end of the state, public health administrator Sandra Martell has been threatened with lawsuits from bar owners who want to continue to offer indoor service in violation of the governor’s orders for that region. At a press conference this week, she pleaded with businesses to spare her agency from spending precious resources trying to police the contentious mandate. […]
Sandra Martell faces a dilemma. She can order a bar closed, for example, but if law enforcement doesn’t back her up, nothing more will happen. And the local sheriff and local politicians have publicly encouraged businesses to defy the state’s orders. Meanwhile, COVID cases, hospitalizations and deaths continue to rise. Two hundred miles south, in Champaign County, public health administrator Julie Pryde’s experience is night and day.
JULIE PRYDE: This job is tough enough in doing it in Champaign, where I have a ton of support. I can’t imagine doing it where you’re fighting against your - the people in your community. It’s horrible. And we’re losing public health people all over the country. […]
The death rate in Champaign County is now less than a quarter of Winnebago’s.
* Meanwhile…
North Dakota has the most new Covid-19 cases per 100,000 population this week, per the White House coronavirus task force. The states in the top ten for new cases per 100,000 population are largely in the Central and Northern US: SD, followed by MT, WI, ID, WY, UT, NE, TN, and IA pic.twitter.com/DJyVKOGHGW
* As subscribers have known for almost two weeks, Vote Yes for Fairness’ own polling has this nip and tuck. Here’s Dave McKinney and Tony Arnold…
Outside the presidential election, there arguably isn’t any bigger outcome Tuesday than whether Illinoisans vote to change the state constitution to set up a new way of taxing workers’ paychecks based on how much they make.
But there’s a debate now as to when voters actually will have an idea of whether their income taxes will change.
Thanks to a potential flood of uncounted mail-in ballots and Illinois’ latest-in-the-nation deadline to count them, one of Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker’s top political strategists said it likely will be well past Election Day before it’s clear whether the ballot question is a winner or loser.
“I think the odds are pretty high,” said Quentin Fulks, Pritzker’s former deputy campaign manager and chairman of the political committee pushing for the graduated income tax, Vote Yes for Fairness. “I’m anticipating probably a week to two weeks for us to know.” […]
Fulks says his committee’s polling shows the battle for changing the taxing structure in the state remains incredibly tight. Survey results his group released from mid-October found 55% of the Illinois electorate supported the graduated tax amendment, with 40% opposed.
…Adding… The antis think fears about a long wait are overblown…
“With historic numbers of voters turning out early, we anticipate clerks across the state will count the vast majority of these early ballots on Election Day, giving us a clear direction on the outcome of the tax hike amendment,” said Lissa Druss, a spokeswoman for the Coalition To Stop The Proposed Tax Hike Amendment.
* Yeah? Well, I did things during the pandemic, too. Not like this. But things…
During the 18 months of the Great Plague (1665-1666), Isaac Newton conceived calculus, set foundations for his theory of light and color, worked on laws of planetary motion, and legend has it, experienced his inspiration of gravity with the falling apple https://t.co/lytNlAbpMIpic.twitter.com/cd8GRQPWGb
The October rise in COVID-19 cases isn’t surprising because people are spending more time indoors, and after seven months in crisis mode, fatigue is settling in. Not everyone is keeping their guard up and masks on.
Here’s what we didn’t see coming: Gov. J.B. Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot in conflict about whether to keep restaurant dining rooms open. As of this week, the governor ordered a new shutdown in the city of Chicago effective Friday, along with similar restrictions for Lake and McHenry counties, suburban Cook County and four other counties including DuPage. Caseloads and hospitalizations are rising. But Lightfoot disagrees with Pritzker’s decision.
A day after indicating she would try to talk Gov. J.B. Pritzker out of tightening restrictions in Chicago, Mayor Lori Lightfoot said Wednesday she had met with the governor and won’t try to block his order to ban indoor bar and dining service in the city.
“We had a very frank and productive conversation with the governor and his team and my team as well. We explored a lot of issues and we came out of that discussion really committed to making sure that we work hard together.”
According to several sources, the Illinois High School Association will announce Wednesday that the basketball season can start as scheduled. It’s a totally unexpected move that directly contradicts the guidelines Gov. J.B. Pritzker and the Illinois Department of Public Health outlined on Tuesday. […]
“After diligent discussion, the Board has made the decision today to follow the recommendation of the IHSA SMAC as it relates to basketball,” IHSA spokesperson Matt Troha wrote in an email to athletic directors. “The Board remains considerate of rising COVID-19 cases in Illinois and understand the importance of adhering to safety guidelines for the good of all citizens. However, the Board has not been presented any causal evidence that rising COVID-19 cases make basketball more dangerous to play by the IDPH or any other health organization nationally or internationally.”
The email says the IHSA will “allow local school officials to make decisions related to participation.”
The disagreement between the IHSA and the governor/IDPH likely means the final decision will come down to the individual school districts. Theoretically the school districts would open themselves up to tremendous liability by playing against the guidelines of the governor and the IDPH.
*** UPDATE 1 *** Gov. Pritzker was asked about this today…
We’ve told school districts what the rules are and I think they all know. The IHSA may have their views on it but school districts know what the rules are and I think that it’s unfortunate, but they would be probably taking on legal liability if they went ahead and move beyond what the state has said is the mitigation standard.
The Illinois High School Association recently announced its intention to move forward with the regularly scheduled basketball season, in contradiction to public health guidance. As COVID-19 cases rise across the State, the importance of following public health guidance has only increased.
We recognize the value of sports in students’ lives and share your hope that students can return safely to play this school year. However, at this moment, we urge you to prioritize health and safety, and to returning the 1.76 million students currently learning remotely to the classroom.
The parents and families of Illinois have trusted us as leaders not only with the education of their children but with their health and safety while in our care. Public health experts have determined that basketball poses a high risk of COVID-19 transmission and is not currently safe to play.
Defying the state’s public health guidance opens schools up to liability and other ramifications that may negatively impact school communities.
Our Illinois schools and communities are safer when we work together in support of public health standards. We are relying on superintendents and school leaders to make responsible choices to protect health and safety and to focus on bringing all of our students back to the classroom.
Wednesday, Oct 28, 2020 - Posted by Advertising Department
[The following is a paid advertisement.]
“Among all the states, Illinois jumped to the head of the pack when it comes to the environment in 2016 with its Future Energy Jobs Act, a law creating a welcoming market for installing solar energy. But because of delays in acting on a successor law to provide new funding, the solar energy industry is leaving the state in what is being called a falling off of the “solar cliff.”
Illinois is estimated to have lost close to 3,500 solar jobs already, and 1,000 more jobs could be gone by the end of the year…
Illinois has worked hard to become a leader in green energy, attracting jobs in the industry and improving the environment. The state has become an important home to businesses installing solar energy and making use of “community development” projects, in which property owners without good access to sunlight can share projects with other property owners.
“I just went through DuPage County (data) for the month of October, and there’s not one case … that they can relate that goes back to restaurants,” Durkin said.
Chris Hoff, director of community health resources at the DuPage County Health Department, said last week that the department’s data has been widely misconstrued in arguing against restrictions on restaurants and bars.
While it’s true only a small percentage of outbreaks have been connected to specific eating and drinking establishments, only about 15% of the county’s more than 22,000 cases at the time had been tied to any specific location through contact tracing interviews with people who test positive.
“All of this information is based on those interviews with people, which means that information is only as good as the information we can get,” Hoff said, adding that the county has an ongoing campaign to encourage more people to answer the phone when tracers call.
Even when people do participate, it’s often difficult to pinpoint where they contracted the virus, he said.
“We know that the environments that promote transmission are indoor settings where there are large numbers of people who spend extended periods of time together without masks,” Hoff said. “And so bars and restaurants definitely fit the bill, along with a lot of other indoor venues.”
Chicago health officials released staggering numbers Tuesday that show just how quickly the coronavirus is spreading in the city, with one estimate indicating that more than 57,000 residents could currently be infected with the virus.
During a weekly press conference discussing the city’s latest travel restrictions, Dr. Allison Arwady, the director of the Chicago Department of Public Health, said that approximately 8,213 Chicago residents have been diagnosed with COVID-19, and are currently considered to be “active” cases.
Those numbers are already high, but city health experts fear the virus could be even more widespread than that. According to Arwady, officials believe there could be between five and seven times as many active cases as are currently being reported, due to residents who haven’t been tested or who aren’t showing symptoms.
Gov. JB Pritzker said the mitigations were triggered in Chicago by seven straight days of hospital admission increases and eight consecutive days of rising test positivity. In Chicago, the number of non-ICU patients is up 72% since late September and the number of those in ICU is up 56% since October 1.
Chicago’s top public health official seemed to anticipate the move before the governor’s announcement.
“If the governor makes this decision, we will obviously support it,” Dr. Allison Arwady said earlier on Tuesday. “The numbers that we have seen here give me no reason to think that this is not imminent.”
But the mayor and her top doc were clearly not on the same page. Click here for more on that.
In July, the Illinois Department of Health published its Restore Illinois Resurgence Plan, which laid out the metrics that would trigger restrictions on nonessential businesses and gatherings.
Pritzker’s actions on Tuesday followed that plan, and it was unclear why Lightfoot and her administration did not understand the metrics it details. […]
Hours after Lightfoot told reporters on Oct. 19 that she didn’t “think there is a cause and effect” between the surge in confirmed cases of the coronavirus and bars and restaurants, Pritzker told the news media he was confident there was a causal relationship between the fast spread of the virus and indoor dining and drinking.
Two days later, Lightfoot acknowledged that the risk of getting COVID-19 is “greatest” at bars and restaurants, “because people gather, they take their masks off, they have a drink, they socialize, they talk.”
That group could eventually include more than 7,500 restaurants statewide, according to Illinois Restaurant Association President Sam Toia, who said he raised his estimate to almost a third of the industry that could be sunk in part due to the governor’s “extreme” measures.
“Why the full shutdown? At least let us try 25% capacity,” Toia said. “We know how to do this right — masking, social distancing and sanitizing. Any business doing it right should be kept open, and any one that isn’t should be shut down. We don’t understand why the restaurants are the only ones affected.”
The rules issued by Pritzker, who has cited studies suggesting bars and restaurants are “super spreading” sites, also mean other city gatherings will be limited to 25 people or 25% of room capacity.
The Democratic governor noted Chicago is averaging twice as many COVID-19 hospital admissions per day compared to a month ago, while its average seven-day testing positivity rate has almost doubled since the beginning of October.
* Jamie Munks, Gregory Pratt and Dan Petrella at the Tribune…
Late last month, Lightfoot cited a decrease in COVID-19 cases as she allowed bars that don’t serve food to reopen for indoor drinking. She also eased rules on restaurants, gyms and other retailers, allowing them to increase capacity. The changes were Lightfoot’s attempt to ease the financial burden on Chicago businesses by lifting frequently criticized restrictions.
But they also came as the number of new COVID-19 cases per day was hovering around 300, well above the 200-case threshold the mayor set months ago as a goal before moderating restrictions.
Chicago now is averaging nearly 800 new cases a day, Arwady said. To put it into perspective, she said 400 was a level of concern and 200 was the level the city wanted to stay under.
So, Toia does have a decent point. Chicago restaurants were limited to 25 percent capacity until the end of September, when the mayor upped the cap and then the spread greatly intensified. But whether reverting back to that 25 percent limit would actually drive numbers back down is another story. I hope to ask that question of the governor today.
*** UPDATE *** Inevitable…
Mayor Lori Lightfoot's dropped her challenge to Gov. Pritzker's ban on indoor dining and bars. She didn't have a lot of options, even though she was upset with the governor's plan.
The Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) today reported 6,110 new confirmed cases of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Illinois, including 51 additional deaths.
Adams County: 1 female 80s
Bureau County: 1 female 70s
Clinton County: 1 female 90s
Cook County: 1 youth, 3 males 60s, 1 female 70s, 1 male 70s, 1 female 80s, 2 males 80s, 2 females 90s
DuPage County: 1 male 70s, 1 female 80s, 3 males 80s, 1 male 90s
Franklin County: 1 female 50s
Jefferson County: 2 males 70s, 1 female 80s
Kankakee County: 1 female 80s
Knox County: 1 female 80s, 1 male 80s
Lake County: 2 females 80s, 1 female 100+
Macon County: 1 male 70s
Madison County: 1 male 50s, 1 male 70s
Marion County: 1 female 80s
McLean County: 1 female 50s, 1 female 90s
Peoria County: 2 females 80s, 2 females 90s
Piatt County: 1 male 80s
Rock Island County: 1 female 60s
Stephenson County: 1 male 70s, 1 female 80s
Wayne County: 1 male 60s
Whiteside County: 1 female 80s, 1 male 90s
Will County: 2 males 80s
Winnebago County: 1 female 70s, 1 female 80s
Currently, IDPH is reporting a total of 389,095 cases, including 9,619 deaths, in 102 counties in Illinois. The age of cases ranges from younger than one to older than 100 years. The preliminary seven-day statewide positivity for cases as a percent of total test from October 21 – October 27 is 6.7%. Within the past 24 hours, laboratories have reported 70,752 specimens for a total 7,459,042. As of last night, 2,861 people in Illinois were reported to be in the hospital with COVID-19. Of those, 600 patients were in the ICU and 243 patients with COVID-19 were on ventilators.
*All data are provisional and will change. In order to rapidly report COVID-19 information to the public, data are being reported in real-time. Information is constantly being entered into an electronic system and the number of cases and deaths can change as additional information is gathered. For health questions about COVID-19, call the hotline at 1-800-889-3931 or email dph.sick@illinois.gov.
And as noted in the headline, Region 3’s 7-day rolling average positivity rate has been at 8 percent or higher for two straight days. One more and mitigations are automatically triggered.
Governor Pritzker and the Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) are announcing COVID-19 resurgence mitigations will be implemented in Region 9, Lake and McHenry counties, beginning at 12:01 am on Saturday, October 31, 2020. Region 9 has seen a 7-day rolling average test positivity rate of 8 percent or above for three consecutive days, which exceed the thresholds set for establishing mitigation measures under the state’s Restore Illinois Resurgence Plan.
The administration continues to work aggressively to support small businesses, distributing nearly $11 million in emergency grants and assistance to businesses and communities in Region 9 alone. Businesses in Region 9, as well as other regions currently under additional mitigations, will receive priority consideration for the current round of Business Interruption Grants (BIG), with $220 million available to help offset costs and losses businesses have incurred as a result of the pandemic.
“As of this morning, Region 9 – Lake and McHenry Counties – has now sustained an average positivity rate of 8 percent or higher for three days – meaning that they will join seven of our 11 other regions in operating under resurgence mitigations,” said Governor JB Pritzker. “So, beginning on Saturday at 12:01 a.m., public gatherings in Lake and McHenry counties will be reduced to 25 people, and indoor dining and indoor bar service will be temporarily closed – although outdoor service in tents and takeout, delivery and drive through service will remain available. These resurgence mitigations aim to cut down on some of the highest high-risk activities until we bring down the positivity rate in a region once again. I know this virus is hard on everyone. But this battle isn’t going away by itself. We have to manage our way through it with the tools we have available to us. And there are many of those tools that nearly everyone in our state has available to join the fight.”
“With Region 9 being added to the list of regions in mitigation, we are getting close to the entire state implementing mitigation measures,” said IDPH Director Dr. Ngozi Ezike. “This is not just a warning, but a call to action. We continue to move backwards, losing all the ground we had gained over the summer. We turned the state around once, let’s do it again. Limit your potential exposures by wearing a mask, physically distancing, and limiting in-person gatherings. It will take all of us working together to beat this virus.”
Mitigation measures taking effect October 31 in Region 9 include:
Bars
No indoor service
All outside bar service closes at 11:00 p.m.
All bar patrons should be seated at tables outside
No ordering, seating, or congregating at bar (bar stools should be removed)
Tables should be 6 feet apart
No standing or congregating indoors or outdoors while waiting for a table or exiting
No dancing or standing indoors
Reservations required for each party
No seating of multiple parties at one table
Restaurants
No indoor dining or bar service
All outdoor dining closes at 11:00 p.m.
Outside dining tables should be 6 feet apart
No standing or congregating indoors or outdoors while waiting for a table or exiting
Reservations required for each party
No seating of multiple parties at one table
Meetings, Social Events, Gatherings
Limit to lesser of 25 guests or 25 percent of overall room capacity
No party buses
Gaming and Casinos close at 11:00 p.m., are limited to 25 percent capacity, and follow mitigations for bars and restaurants, if applicable
These mitigations do not apply to schools or polling places.
From the onset of the pandemic, support for small businesses has been one of the central features of the Pritzker administration’s COVID-19 response. Since March, the administration has launched a menu of small business and community relief programs – with over $500 million in grants and programs launched by the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity (DCEO), including emergency hospitality grants, a downstate small business stabilization program, Fast Track Capital, and more. For more information on programs available for businesses and communities, please visit DCEO’s website.
While all regions are seeing an increase in positivity rates, Region 9 has experienced sustained increases in both positivity and hospitalization rates. The region is currently seeing an 8.4 percent positivity average, an increase from 4.8 percent in September and from 3.1% percent in June. COVID-related hospital admissions have also surged, now three times as high as September and five times as high as June.
As of today, including Region 9, a total of eight of the state’s 11 regions have triggered one of the state’s failsafe state-action metric. Currently, Regions 4, 5, 7, and 8 are operating under Tier 1 mitigation measures given that these regions continue to report a 7-day rolling positivity rate above 8 percent. Regions 10 and 11 will soon operate under Tier 1 mitigations given that these regions triggered additional mitigations based on sustained increases in both positivity and hospitalization rates. Region 1 is currently operating under Tier 2 mitigation measures after continuing to see a rise in positivity, even under the Tier 1 mitigation framework, with the highest rolling positivity average in the state.
In the coming days, IDPH will continue to track the positivity rate in Region 9 to determine if mitigations can be relaxed, if additional mitigations are required, or if current mitigations should remain in place. If the positivity rate in Region 9 averages less than or equal to 6.5 percent over a three-day period, there is a decrease in hospital admissions for COVID-19 like illness over a three-day period, and the three-day rolling averages of ICU bed availability and medical/surgical bed availability is greater than or equal to 20 percent over a seven-day period, the region will return to Phase 4 mitigations under the Restore Illinois Plan. Conversely, if the average positivity rate continues to increase over seven out of 10 days and the hospital admissions for COVID-19 like illness continues to increase over seven out of 10 days, more stringent mitigations can be applied. If the metrics remain stable, the region will continue to be monitored.
As part of the administration’s robust response to the pandemic, the state continues to strengthen its nation-leading testing operation. Testing remains readily available throughout Illinois, as the state continues to average more than 70,000 tests per day. The administration will build upon this progress, given that testing remains a critical step to reduce further spread of the virus in communities. To find the nearest testing center, please visit DPH.Illinois.Gov/Testing.
IDPH will continue to work closely with local health departments in Lake and McHenry counties to provide education to the public and offer information to businesses and organizations on safe ways to reopen. The significance of face coverings, social distancing, and hand washing have been consistently emphasized by the administration throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.
A full list of mitigation measures pertaining to some businesses and industries may be found on the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity (DCEO) website at www.dceocovid19resources.com/restore-illinois.
Do you ever feel that you’re the most hated man in Illinois in this virus situation?
* Part of his response…
Pritzker: "Tough decisions need to be made by leaders. … Doing the right thing is to be a leader, no matter what some minority of folks yell at you. The vast majority of people in Illinois want to get through this virus" by keeping people healthy and out of hospitals.
Today, Betsy Dirksen Londrigan’s campaign released its 11th television ad, “Truth,” which lays out the repeated fact checks of Congressman Rodney Davis’ lies. Multiple independent fact checks have called Davis’ ads and claims false, yet he continues to fill the airwaves with lies about Betsy as well as his disastrous health care record.
The KMOV fact check found Davis’ claim that Betsy Dirksen Londrigan is lying about not taking any money from Illinois House Speaker Michael J. Madigan and that Madigan spent nearly $300,000 to elect Dirksen Londrigan is “false.” The $300,000 Davis refers to is from the Democratic Party of Illinois, a group dedicated to electing Democrats to office in Illinois.
Davis also lied about Dirksen Londrigan breaking her promise not to accept corporate dollars, another claim KMOV confirmed is “false.” Unlike Davis, who has accepted more than $3 million in corporate PAC money, Dirksen Londrigan is refusing to accept corporate PAC money, now or when in Congress, so she won’t be beholden to anyone except the Central Illinois families she represents.
A separate fact check from WGLT also confirmed that Davis voted 11 times to repeal the Affordable Care Act without a replacement despite his repeated false claims to the contrary. Repealing the Affordable Care Act would strip health care coverage from millions, including more than 31,000 in the 13th District, and remove protections from more than 282,500 13th District residents with pre-existing conditions.
“After all the ads, you deserve to know the truth,” said the narrator. “Independent fact checkers say Rodney Davis’ attacks against Betsy Londrigan just aren’t true. … The truth: Mike Madigan is not funding Londrigan’s campaign. Davis is also lying about his record on health care. “Davis voted 11 times to repeal the Affordable Care Act with no replacement.””
“Trump Campaign Co-Chair Rodney Davis is taking a page out of the Trump Playbook by doubling down even after being called out repeatedly for his lies by independent fact checks,” said campaign spokeswoman Eliza Glezer. “Davis doesn’t want to run on his horrible health record so he’s resorting to lying to his constituents about his opponent and his disastrous record. Central Illinois families can’t trust Rodney Davis.”
Betsy: I’m Betsy Londrigan and I approve this message.
Narrator: After all the ads, you deserve to know the truth.
Independent fact checkers say Rodney Davis’ attacks against Betsy Londrigan just aren’t true.
Reporter: That claim is false… That claim is false.
Narrator: The truth: Mike Madigan is not funding Londrigan’s campaign.
Davis is also lying about his record on health care.
“Davis voted 11 times to repeal the Affordable Care Act with no replacement.”
We can’t trust Rodney Davis.
* Meanwhile…
Yet another independent fact checker has confirmed that the false claims in Betsy Londrigan’s attack ad featuring the former owner of the Feed Store are not true. In a tweet, WCIA’s Mark Maxwell said the claims in Londrigan’s “misleading attack ad” are “baseless” and “false.”
From WCIA:
Richardson said the Londrigan campaign “called up and asked if we’d be willing to make that ad, and explained what the subject was, so I thought about it for about a day or so and said, ‘sure, yeah.’”
Londrigan’s campaign did not make a strategist or advertising consultant available for an interview, but the campaign acknowledged the ad’s message was crafted to connect with voters who are frustrated with the economic fallout from the pandemic.
“The PPP loan program was supposed to be a lifeline for small businesses, but we got the run around while political insiders got the money first, and funds ran out,” Richardson said in the ad.
Fact check: PPP funds were quickly replenished, and while the application window has closed, the program still has available funds remaining. The temporary lack of funding did not prevent Richardson from applying for a loan. There’s no evidence Davis ever tipped the scales in favor of his brother’s company or against any other company.
“Rodney Davis’s family got to the front of the line for a million dollar payout, and he voted to keep it secret while businesses like ours suffered,” Richardson says.
Fact check: Several hundred thousand companies successfully applied for wildly popular COVID-19 relief loans within the first few days of the program’s opening. There is no evidence the Congressman’s influence expedited their application or slowed down anyone else’s.
The Londrigan campaign cites a vote on House Resolution 6782 to support their claim that “he voted to keep it secret.”
Fact check: The text of that bill would have only required loans worth more than $2 million to be publicly disclosed, and would not have applied to the loan in question.
The Davis campaign says the political attack ad is “absurd” and “dishonest.”
WCIA video: Fact check: Davis never voted to keep brother’s loan “a secret”
Last week, KMOV called the false claims in a similar TV ad from the Londrigan campaign “misleading” and also said “there is no evidence showing Rep. Rodney Davis had anything to do with his family getting PPP.” The Illinois Times also reported, “There also is no proof that the congressman’s family was treated any differently than anyone else…”
*** UPDATE 1 *** Congressional Leadership Fund is up with a new ad…
*** UPDATE 2 *** Congressman Davis…
Today, Rodney Davis’ campaign for Congress released two new ads, “No Proof” and “Very Best.” The first ad, “No Proof,” highlights independent fact checks of Betsy Londrigan’s lies about Rodney Davis and his family, and also highlights Rodney’s support for the bipartisan Paycheck Protection Program.
The second ad, “Very Best,” highlights Londrigan’s close ties to Mike Madigan and Rodney’s bipartisan work to lower healthcare costs, protect pre-existing condition coverage, and support small business.
Today, Congressional candidate Jeanne Ives (IL-06) released her final cable ad of the General Election, highlighting opponent, Rep. Sean Casten’s, dismal record of choosing tax hikes and special interests over the real people and small businesses of Illinois Sixth Congressional District.
The ad, Trust, confronts the fact that for the past two years Sean Casten has neglected his district to push for sweetheart tax deals and subsidies for special interests. Casten has been so diligent in his self-dealing, that when the CARES Act was being negotiated in the House, his first action was not to ask what his district would get. No. Congressman Casten’s first play was to lobby Nancy Pelosi for special energy subsidies.
The ad goes on to contrast Casten’s disinterest in those he serves with Ives’ involvement in her community and service to her neighbors.
The region that includes Lake and McHenry counties could face the same restrictions as early as Saturday. Positive COVID-19 results, measured as a seven-day average, exceeded 8% of tests given for two straight days in those counties. A third day would trigger more restrictions.
Hospitalizations for COVID-19 continue to increase across the state. As of Monday night, the state reported 2,758 people in Illinois were hospitalized with COVID-19, including 595 in intensive care unit beds and 241 using ventilators. Those numbers were once again new highs since early to mid-June.
Researchers at the University of Kansas report counties with mask mandates thwarted significant escalation in transmission of COVID-19 and counties operating without a requirement people wear a face covering suffered steady infection rate increases. […]
“Cases in counties with a mask mandate stopped increasing. They didn’t go away. They stopped increasing,” Ginther said. “And, cases in counties without a mandate, starting in mid-August, just kind of went crazy.”
The KU researchers demonstrated Kansas counties without the mask order experienced a surge in coronavirus infection rates that climbed from about 10 cases per 100,0000 in July to nearly 40 cases per 100,000 in October. The number of cases for counties covered by the mask order plateaued since July at around 20 cases per 100,000.
Masks are not 100 percent effective, but they do work. Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. The study is here.
Antibodies against the novel coronavirus declined rapidly in the British population during the summer, a study found on Tuesday, suggesting protection after infection may not be long lasting and raising the prospect of waning immunity in the community.
Scientists at Imperial College London have tracked antibody levels in the British population following the first wave of COVID-19 infections in March and April.
Their study found that antibody prevalence fell by a quarter, from 6% of the population around the end of June to just 4.4% in September. That raises the prospect of decreasing population immunity ahead of a second wave of infections in recent weeks that has forced local lockdowns and restrictions.
Although immunity to the novel coronavirus is a complex and murky area, and may be assisted by T cells, as well as B cells that can stimulate the quick production of antibodies following re-exposure to the virus, the researchers said the experience of other coronaviruses suggested immunity might not be enduring.
A church and nursing home in Jacksonville are among the latest places with COVID-19 outbreaks, health officials said Tuesday.
The Morgan County Department of Public Health said 11 people who have attended Westfair Baptist Church had the virus. Department officials also confirmed two residents and two staff members of Heritage Health Therapy and Senior Care were infected.
Dale Bainter, Morgan County’s public health administrator, said there is a lot of community spread of the virus.
“We’re just seeing a lot of small clusters and pockets, and … family spread.” He said it’s sometimes hard to identify the origin of a case.
“Let’s say we’ve got two outbreaks, but we might have a family … impacted by both,” Bainter said. “You don’t know which caused the other one.”
DeKalb County Board member Larry West, a Republican representing the county’s first district, also weighed in on mitigation enforcement in a Saturday social media comment on a public Daily Chronicle social media post.
“Here is an idea….as long as any business has restrictions on it and employees and owners are not able to make ends meet, the state government should not be paid,” West wrote. “This would be the governor, his cabinet and advisors, all state senate and representatives and health department. This should include county boards and health departments. Being a board member I would support this until our local businesss are safe.”
More than 124,000 hours of overtime, equaling more than $6.4 million.
That is what has been dished out to employees of the Illinois Department of Employment Security (IDES) because of the increased need for their services.
Representatives from around Illinois on both sides of the aisle say 124,000 hours of overtime in nine months is not sustainable.
Rep. Kathy Willis, D-Northlake, said it is not fair to the employees or the people of Illinois.
However, IDES said they really had no other option. […]
Willis said the crux of this issue is the lack of employees that the department has. She said with all of this overtime, more progress should have been made thus far.
Discuss.
…Adding… Rep. Willis in comments…
Want to add something that i actually said in the interview that conveniently got cut… I actually thanked the employees that were willing to work the overtime to help the people that needed unemployment help. I also mentioned that having people work such long hours of overtime that adds to the stress of their job and again how the employees were willing to step up and work through the back log.
During a visit Tuesday in Champaign, Gov. J.B. Pritzker announced plans to create two community college–based manufacturing training academies.
The Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity will provide a total of $15 million for two capital grants through a competitive application process.
The manufacturing training academies will be constructed in downstate Illinois, where the DCEO said there’s a shortage of skilled laborers.
Pritzker made the announcement at Champaign-based Eden Park Illumination, which was founded by two University of Illinois professors and makes ultraviolet lighting for various industries.
[DCEO Director Erin Guthrie] noted that Eden Park has grown rapidly in recent months, creating a large number of new jobs in the Champaign area.
“However, they need help with the hiring to fill the demand they have both for their customers and as they make product advancements and innovate,” she said. “The same is true for many of other Illinois companies that we’ve heard from. The need for skilled manufacturers is a big one and it weighs heavily on them as they plan for the future.”
Despite the decline of manufacturing nationally, Guthrie said it is still the largest contributor to the state’s economy, employing more than 500,000 workers and accounting for $60 billion in exports annually.
But David Boulay, president and CEO of the Illinois Manufacturing Excellence Center, said rapidly changing technology in the industry is making it challenging for manufacturers to find the skilled labor they need.
“Worker skills really are expiring like never before,” he said. “Automation, artificial intelligence, collaborative robots are creating massive change in the workplace. And even during this pandemic, we are seeing the signs of that massive change accelerated.”
The Urbana City Council is calling on Gov. JB Pritzker to enact a mandatory moratorium on utility disconnections.
This comes after the council passed a resolution to prioritize making utility shutoffs a safety risk.
Mayor Diane Wolfe Marlin hand-delivered the resolution to the governor’s staff on Tuesday, Oct. 27, while Pritzker made a stop in Champaign. […]
“I don’t have the ability to simply put a moratorium in a place like that,” Pritzker said. “What we did do was go to the ICC and have them work with all of the utilities to try to have a moratorium on shutoffs.” […]
“I was surprised to hear him say that he didn’t have the power to do that,” Marlin said.
On the eve of a special IHSA board meeting to announce new details about the fate of the winter high school sports season, Illinois health officials have moved basketball from being classified as a “moderate risk” sport to the “higher risk” category.
According to new guidelines released by the Illinois Department of Public Health, the department assessed the risk for transmission associated with basketball, and found that it should be classified as a “higher risk” activity. […]
While it isn’t clear what that could mean for the winter basketball season, some clarity could be coming, as the IHSA will host a special board meeting on Wednesday to provide updates on its various winter sports, and to vote on the path forward for those activities.
Winter high school sports seasons in Illinois were “put on hold” Tuesday by Gov. J.B. Pritzker and the Illinois Department of Public Health.
Practice for boys and girls basketball seasons were expected to begin Nov. 16, with games to be played as early as Nov. 30.
But the IDPH moved basketball from medium risk to high risk on its website Tuesday, and under current conditions in the coronavirus pandemic, high-risk sports are allowed only no-contact practices.
“About 15 minutes prior to Governor Pritzker’s press conference today, we were alerted that the Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) has elevated the sport of basketball from a medium risk level to a high risk level. We remain considerate of the recent rise in positive COVID-19 cases in our state. However, in our meeting with IDPH on Friday (October 23), we felt that we presented multiple options that would allow for basketball to be conducted safely by IHSA schools this winter, many of which are being utilized in neighboring states who plan to play high school basketball. Despite that setback, there is some positive news, as IDPH accepted the IHSA’s mitigations related to other sports, including cheerleading and dance, allowing them to move from a medium risk level to a low risk level. We will hold our special Board of Directors meeting on October 28 as scheduled, where our Board will provide direction on the other winter sports, as well as discuss the IHSA sports schedule for the remainder of the 2020-21 school year.”
Later Tuesday, the Illinois Basketball Coaches Association released its own statement in response to Pritzker’s announcement, with the organization’s Twitter account posting that the IBCA is “very disappointed to learn of (Tuesday’s) decision by the governor and IDPH.”
“Our data suggests that the spread of this virus has been minimal inside our gyms among our student-athletes and coaches,” the IBCA statement reads.
The aforementioned data comes from a survey sent out by the group to the state’s basketball coaches that tabulated both the use of summer and fall contact days and the number of positive COVID-19 tests in programs.
“The health and safety of our student-athletes will always be a primary consideration of our coaches,” the statement reads. “But we have not been given specific information as to why basketball has been elevated to “High Risk” in Illinois. … The lack of transparency is incredibly frustrating for all of us who simply want to enjoy playing the game of basketball in our home state of Illinois.
“We strongly urge the governor and IDPH to re-evaluate their decision to move basketball to the “High Risk” category and to provide clarity with the metrics used to drive these decisions.”
This is not to criticize Pritzker for using science and data to make his decisions. He’s been very consistent on that over the last 7 ½ months. And you’d rather see someone err on the side of caution in a pandemic.
But you can’t blame players, coaches and administrators around the state for feeling as though Pritzker dealt them the stick’s short end again. It’s also not unfair to say that the lines of communication between Pritzker and the IHSA could stand to be much better.
If it looks like Pritzker has upstaged the IHSA in order to get his way, well, you know what they say.
