* The Peoria region is the latest hot spot…
A surge of COVID-19 patients is filling up multiple UnityPoint Health hospitals in central Illinois.
All three of its Peoria-area hospitals — Methodist, Proctor and Pekin — are at capacity, said Jaymee Barra, a spokeswoman for the health care company.
“Other patients needing critical care are being kept in the emergency department until a bed becomes available,” she said. “At the same time, our emergency departments are full and patients needing care are experiencing longer than usual wait times.”
On Wednesday night, UnityPoint had 62 COVID patients, 16 of them in the ICU. Most of the COVID patients, 87%, were unvaccinated, said Barra.
…Adding… Bloomington area as well…
Hospital beds in McLean County are at capacity as health officials report 162 new cases of COVID-19.
Health officials report that 34 McLean County residents are hospitalized due to COVID-19 as 100% of ICU beds, and 99% of total beds are used.
According to a news release, 44 people from outside the county hospitalized with COVID-19 in the twin cities.
* Shaw Media…
The Illinois Department of Public Health reported 11,858 new confirmed and probable cases of COVID-19 and 52 additional deaths Thursday.
It’s the most new cases in a day since December 1, 2020. The state is now averaging more than 8,000 new cases a day for the first time since December 16, 2020.
* Jake Griffin…
State health officials today reported 3,725 COVID-19 patients were being treated in hospitals throughout Illinois.
That’s up 111 patients from Wednesday.
Of those hospitalized, 772 are in intensive care, according to Illinois Department of Public Health records.
IDPH officials also reported 52 more deaths from the virus, as well as 11,858 new cases of the disease statewide.
That brings the state’s COVID-19 death toll to 27,065, while 1,933,291 infections have been diagnosed since the start of the pandemic.
The state’s seven-day case positivity rate is at 4.7%, up from 4.5% the day before.
That’s a hospitalization increase of 547 admissions compared to a week ago. 391 people were on ventilators, which is the most since early January.
* Keep in mind that hospitalizations and deaths are a lagging indicator, which is not acknowledged here…
On Wednesday, Britain announced that it had recorded 78,610 new cases — a daily increase not seen at any point during the pandemic, even during the initial wave of delta. Hospitalizations have increased, too, though at a slower rate, while deaths are at worst flat.
* From the Atlantic…
And even if Omicron is milder, greater transmissibility will likely trump that reduced virulence. Omicron is spreading so quickly that a small proportion of severe cases could still flood hospitals. To avert that scenario, the variant would need to be substantially milder than Delta—especially because hospitals are already at a breaking point. Two years of trauma have pushed droves of health-care workers, including many of the most experienced and committed, to quit their job. The remaining staff is ever more exhausted and demoralized, and “exceptionally high numbers” can’t work because they got breakthrough Delta infections and had to be separated from vulnerable patients, John Lowe told me. This pattern will only worsen as Omicron spreads, if the large clusters among South African health-care workers are any indication. “In the West, we’ve painted ourselves into a corner because most countries have huge Delta waves and most of them are stretched to the limit of their health-care systems,” Emma Hodcroft, an epidemiologist at the University of Bern, in Switzerland, told me. “What happens if those waves get even bigger with Omicron?”
* Press release…
Building on the successes of last week, the State of Illinois and Cook County Health are offering another Sunday of mass vaccination booster clinics in an effort to improve access and availability of the COVID-19 vaccine at a time when new variants and increased transmission levels threaten our most vulnerable residents.
The State of Illinois and Cook County Health will once again operate a one-day mass vaccination booster clinic on Sunday, December 19 at three regionally located clinics within Cook County: Blue Island, Arlington Heights, and North Riverside. Last week’s one-day booster clinics administered 2,886 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine, further underscoring the need and demand for this vaccine.
* Meanwhile, the covid cheerleaders have filed another lawsuit…
A class-action lawsuit was filed Dec. 13 by 88 teachers and school staff from across Illinois in opposition to Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s COVID-19 school mandates on vaccination, testing and masks.
The lawsuit naming 22 different school districts, the Illinois Department of Public Health, the Illinois State Board of Education and the governor as defendants seeks an emergency injunction blocking Pritzker’s health requirements for school personnel.
The challenge in Sangamon County Circuit Court argues the vaccination and testing program violates the state’s Health Care Right of Conscience Act.
“The educators object to the vaccination and testing of the coronavirus as both health care services violate their moral conscience,” the lawsuit states. “Should the educators object to these proposed health care services, the law prohibits the defendants from discriminating against them.”
* More…
* After one year, how are the suburbs and Illinois doing in vaccinations?
* Major Music Acts Are Seeing 20% No-Show Rates at Concerts
* Facing a new flood of COVID patients, Colorado nurses say the stress is unsustainable
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A different way of looking at punitive gun laws
Thursday, Dec 16, 2021 - Posted by Rich Miller
* Last month in The Trace’s daily roundup…
Cook County’s chief public defender: End the criminalization of gun possession.
In an op-ed for The Nation, Sharone Mitchell Jr. lent his support to an amicus brief filed by public defenders against New York’s gun licensing policy, decrying how it’s largely young men of color who are affected when illegal gun possession cases are prosecuted. “Despite the Second Amendment’s claimed protections — that have only expanded in the last 60 years — Black and brown men in New York, Chicago, and other localities around the country aren’t protected like white gun owners: We’re arrested, prosecuted, and warehoused in prisons,” he writes.
Mitchell expressed support for many policies of the gun reform movement — including funding community violence intervention, repealing the gun industry’s unique legal protections, and restricting assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. But he argued that the cost of gun possession prosecutions has been too high for Black and brown communities, while also failing to cut the supply of guns to those areas.
* Mitchell’s op-ed has all but been ignored by the Chicago media…
I think about a college classmate, who is Black. A licensed gun owner in another state, he was visiting family in Illinois—a state with different licensing laws. He left his licensed gun in his bag, which he put through the metal detector at a bar where he planned on watching the Air & Water Show. The bag set off the detector and my classmate was arrested and prosecuted for possession of a firearm. I became his public defender. Because of his arrest, he served time in jail, lost his job, and faced housing instability. The shame and trauma stay with him to this day.
I think about a man my office represents, a father of four kids and professional driver, who purchased a firearm after being caught in the cross fire of a shooting on the freeway. He was willing to do anything to keep himself and his family safe. But he was Black. Shortly after he started carrying a gun for his own protection, suburban police arrested him and prosecutors charged him with a felony for not having the right license.
I also think about the hundreds of young Black men my office represents every year, arrested and facing years in prison for simple possession of a gun because they were terrified, but didn’t have enough money, the wherewithal, or time to purchase a license. Often, they are denied a license because of a prior drug conviction—an obstacle to licensure that their white counterparts, far less likely to be arrested for drug possession than Black and brown Americans, do not face.
I think about how differently they would be treated by police and prosecutors if they were born a different color, lived in a different area of the state. Here’s the stark reality of injustice: Over 75 percent of firearm possession convictions in Illinois occur in Cook County, in a few Chicago neighborhoods.
Most critically, however, my office sees the profound and oppressive impact of disproportionate gun arrests on the people we represent. We see how, far from ending gun violence, this form of “gun control” completely undermines public health and safety. The people we serve face a dual threat: harm from a community awash in violence—and harm from a system awash in incarceration. And throughout it all, guns don’t disappear, and shootings continue.
The truth is, laws criminalizing gun possession not only devastate Black and brown communities; they also fail to achieve one of their primary objectives: reducing the supply of guns on our streets. As the Chicago Police Department seizes thousands of guns on the street, thousands more exist on the market and access to them remains far too easy.
* I decided to post the public defender’s op-ed after reading this tweet from a pro-gun exurban Republican legislator and figured they would go together well…
…Adding… Semi-related…
With the school shooting at Oxford High School near Detroit, Mich., two weeks ago still fresh in the minds of many teachers and parents, some wonder what school officials might have missed leading up to the tragedy.
The Illinois Education Association stated members across the state continue to report violence in their schools. Now, the organization is pushing for school leaders to follow proper safety protocols.
Gov. JB Pritzker signed a bill into law in 2019 requiring all schools to identify staff for threat assessment teams and create a procedure to handle threats by February 2020. IEA President Kathi Griffin is working with a bipartisan group of state lawmakers to craft a bill to track schools that aren’t complying with that law.
Griffin says Illinois school administrators who don’t have a plan in place must act now to keep their students, staff, and school communities safe. […]
The state doesn’t know how many districts follow the school threat assessment law right now. Despite that, Rep. Fred Crespo (D-Hoffman Estates) and Rep. Tony McCombie (R-Savanna) say school districts must step up and follow the mandate.
They plan to file language soon for a trailer bill to ensure the state can monitor and enforce the law. Crespo said school leaders need to understand they’re on the hook when it comes to safety.
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* Last Friday…
Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed four bills Friday that range from requiring restaurants to include milk with kids’ meals with calorie limits, to half-staff flag protocols.
Lawmakers passed several bills in October during what is traditionally fall veto session. Friday, Pritzker’s office announced four of those bills are now law. Around a dozen bills remaining on his desk. At least one could face a veto.
Among the bills Pritzker signed Friday is House Bill 3490, which says if a restaurant includes milk as a default beverage in a kid’s meal, the drink must be dairy milk and contain no more than 130 calories per container or serving. The law takes effect immediately.
* The underlined words are what was recently added to existing state law and the lined-through words were struck from existing law…
(b) Notwithstanding any other provision of law, a restaurant shall, by default, include one of the following default beverages with a children’s meal sold by the restaurant:
(1) water with no added natural or artificial sweeteners;
(2) sparkling water with no added natural or artificial sweeteners;
(3) flavored water with no added natural or artificial sweeteners;
(4) nonfat or 1% dairy milk containing no more than 130 calories per container or serving as offered for sale with no added natural or artificial sweeteners
(5) nondairy milk alternatives:
(A) with no added natural or artificial sweeteners;
(B) containing no more than 130 calories per container or serving as offered for sale; and
(C) meeting the standards for the National School Lunch Program as set forth in 7 CFR 210.10; or
(6) 100% fruit or vegetable juice or juice combined with water or carbonated water, with no added sweeteners, in a serving size of no more than 8 ounces.
* I told you all that so I could point you to this…
Determined to reduce childhood obesity, Mayor Lori Lightfoot moved Wednesday to stop Chicago restaurants from automatically serving kids meals with sugary, high-calorie drinks.
At a City Council meeting, Lightfoot joined City Clerk Anna Valencia in introducing an ordinance that would prohibit Chicago restaurants from serving or marketing pop and other sugary drinks as the “default beverage” with kids meals. […]
Instead, the “default” beverages on kids meals would be:
• Water or sparkling water or flavored water with “no added natural or artificial sweeteners”
• Nonfat or 1% dairy milk containing “no more than 130 calories per container or serving offered for sale.”
• 100% fruit or vegetable juice or juice combined with water or carbonated water with no added sweeteners in a serving size of no more than 8 ounces.
• “Nondairy milk alternatives” that meet National School Lunch Program standards, contain “no added natural or artificial sweeteners” and have “no more than 130 calories per container or serving for sale.”
Every beverage “listed or displayed on a restaurant menu or in-store advertisement for children’s meals” would have to be one of those “default” beverages, the ordinance states. City inspectors would make sure of it.
Hilarious.
…Adding… Illinois Beverage Association…
Earlier this year, the Illinois Beverage Association partnered with the American Heart Association, members of the General Assembly and Illinois restaurants to support legislation (Public Act 102-0529) establishing menu guidelines for children’s meals. The Mayor’s ordinance simply reflects state law that has already passed with the industry’s support. Unfortunately, Mayor Lightfoot’s team apparently was unaware of the coalition in support of the state policy when introducing their ordinance yesterday. Members of the Beverage Association are proud of their track record of offering low and no-calorie choices to consumers and support marketing guidelines for kids.
…Adding… From Clerk Valencia’s spokesperson…
Just wanted to reach out and let you know that Clerk Valencia did not join the Mayor in the introduction of legislation regarding the prohibition of sugary drinks at Chicago restaurants.
Their beef is with the Sun-Times.
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* I think it’s safe to say that the first part of this tweet is correct and the second part of this tweet is not quite there yet. You may recall that Mayor Irvin took himself out of contention for governor in October. He then went on to declare a Dr. Ezike Day in Aurora a few days later. He’s since had a change of heart about running. The president’s lousy poll numbers are very enticing to Republicans, however, and others are also now reportedly interested. Anyway, I’ve long been told to not expect any Griffin-related kickoff/rollout until after the holidays, so stay tuned…
* I haven’t been able to confirm this dollar amount, but it’s gonna be substantial…
The second part of the tweet is completely accurate, but we’ve known that all along.
…Adding… With a hat tip to a commenter, here’s Illinois Review…
While Irvin is often considered Republican, his voting record shows he’s pulled Democrat primary ballots more than GOP ballots over the last five or six elections.
…Adding… Crain’s…
Zia Ahmed, a spokesman for Griffin, denied the reports as inaccurate.
But sources familiar with the matter believe Griffin has indeed identified a candidate he’s willing to support, and is insisting that party leaders raise millions of dollars first in support of this person. Griffin would then more than match that money raised with his own fortune, the sources say.
A campaign spokesman for Irvin, who said in October there was “no way” he would be running for governor, did not return a request for comment. Two days ago an Irvin spokesman again denied the rumors.
…Adding… Some react…
…Adding… Oh…
…Adding… Sun-Times…
Illinois’ richest man Ken Griffin attempted to shoot down rumors Thursday that he had found his gubernatorial candidate, saying in a statement he looks forward to supporting Republicans or Democrats who “will address” issues “that plague our state.”
“We have real problems in Illinois with violence, corruption and profligate spending and I look forward to supporting candidates — be it Republican or Democrat — who will address these issues that plague our state,” Griffin said in a statement.
A source close to Griffin sought to clarify the Citadel founder and CEO’s position even further, saying he “has not decided yet who to support for governor.” […]
“They’ve been after him for awhile, and [Irvin’s] been going back and forth,” said one Republican source, who’s talked with members of Griffin’s team. “But there’s no doubt that he’s the christened choice.”
…Adding… Crain’s…
Meanwhile, the chatter about Griffin may be setting off other developments in the Republican Party. One of them concerns Todd Ricketts, the finance chairman of the Republican National Committee and a co-owner of the Chicago Cubs.
Ricketts had previously announced he would not run for governor. But asked about that possibility today, his spokesman discouraged, but did not rule out, such a possibility, saying, “Ricketts has no current plans to run for governor.”
…Adding… Tribune…
Forces aligned with billionaire Ken Griffin are pushing the Illinois Republican Party to back his preferred slate of candidates for 2022 and are focusing on Aurora Mayor Richard Irvin as a candidate for governor, sources familiar with the planning said Thursday.
In exchange for the Illinois GOP’s first modern-day endorsement of a slate of statewide candidates, Griffin would help underwrite the state party financially while also pumping at least $150 million into the race for governor, the sources said. […]
Besides Irvin, who was elected as Aurora’s first Black mayor in 2017, the tentative ticket also includes state Rep. Avery Bourne as lieutenant governor. Bourne, 29, a three-term lawmaker from Downstate Morrisonville, is widely viewed as a future star in the party.
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