Data from the Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) shows that nearly 70% of all COVID-19 outbreaks in Illinois since the beginning of the pandemic have occurred within long-term care/skilled care facilities, assisted living facilities and developmentally disabled facilities. Meanwhile other settings like restaurants represent a miniscule number of outbreaks but have been the prime target of Governor Pritzker’s extreme mitigation orders.
For example, restaurants have accounted for 1% of the total number of statewide COVID-19 outbreaks; with 1% attributed to bars, 2% attributed to retail sales locations, 2% attributed to places of worship, and 2% to community events; to name just a few categories. The complete data regarding outbreaks is attached for public view. Unfortunately, IDPH does not include long-term care/skilled care facilities, assisted living facilities and developmentally disabled facilities in their outbreak pie chart that they regularly refer to on their website for justification. The attached chart does.
State Representative Joe Sosnowski (R-Rockford) said: “Restaurants, retailers and houses of worship are not the culprits of community spread of COVID-19 and we need to stop treating them as such. IDPH’s own data demonstrates that most outbreaks of COVID-19 in Illinois are attributable to long-term care and other congregate living facilities. With this undisputed fact in mind, destroying people’s livelihoods and forcing people out of work with extreme statewide restrictions is clearly not based on data and science.
In fact, the Governor’s mitigation policies are creating more societal ills far and beyond the virus itself. Anxiety, depression, suicide and domestic violence rates have spiked in the shadow of COVID-19. We are not meant to live isolated from others. Children should not be educated via computer screens with no socialization or organized activities, nor should government officials and public health bureaucrats be picking who is allowed to be in business and who is not.
The Governor and Dr. Ezike should do a better job of displaying data on outbreaks and not leave data out of their reports to justify their decisions. They should stop creating extreme restrictions and focus their mitigation policies on where most outbreaks happen.”
Representative Sosnowski serves the 69th District which includes portions of Winnebago and Boone Counties.