For most of the country, businesses have started to reopen and are trying to get back to normal. Some states, such as Wyoming, never really went into lockdown, to begin with. Then there are other states who have decided to continue isolation restrictions no matter how bad it hurts the economy.
Illinois is one of these states. Its Governor, J.B. Pritzker, recently told Jake Tapper from CNN that he has no intention to end the current restrictions anytime soon.
Pritzker explained that he intends to implement a dramatic increase in testing as well as contact tracing. He also says that he had been largely going it alone.
“I have not been counting on the White House, because there have been too many situations in which they’ve made promises not delivered,” Pritzker says. “Very recently they promised a lot of swabs. They’re supposed to arrive today, the first shipment of those. I’m looking forward to that.”
Tapper then asked him to comment on some confusion regarding a publication from the Chicago Tribune about reopening the state that claims Pritzker is moving back the deadline and making this go on longer than it really needs to.
Pritzker responded, “Phase IV is just the phase before we would have a vaccine, assuming maybe we never get a vaccine, we’ll have to deal with hopefully a treatment that will come along that will be very effective, but even without that, everyone’s going to have to wear a mask. We’re still going to have to socially distance. The truth is that Coronavirus is still out there.”
“It hasn’t gone anywhere. And so we all are going to have to change the way we do things until we’re able to eradicate it. If the Chicago Tribune thinks everything will go back to complete normal without us having an effective treatment or a vaccine, they’re just dead wrong.”
Keeping your citizens under unnecessary lockdown is going too far. If President Trump says it’s ok to open back up, then that should be enough.
