COVID-19 disaster continues 3 years after Pritzker's first stay-at-home order

[March 21, 2023]  By Greg Bishop | The Center Square

(The Center Square) – Three years ago this week, Gov. J.B. Pritzker ordered Illinoisans to stay home to slow the spread of COVID-19.

On March 21, 2020, Illinois entered what went from “two weeks to slow the spread” to more than two months of orders to stay home and, continuing to this day, consecutive disaster declarations and executive orders.

Earlier this month, Pritzker reflected on his orders over the years.

“Thousands and thousands of more people would have died in Illinois if we had followed the lead of a state like Florida,” Pritzker said. “If they had followed our lead, thousands fewer people would have died in Florida.”

Researcher Casey Mulligan with the National Bureau of Economic Research compared various metrics from across the country and said Illinois did poorly on education and economic outcomes, but average on mortality.

That's a claim a researcher called "fake news."

“If you’re going to ruin everything, it would be nice to be above average on something, but they didn’t do that,” Mulligan told The Center Square Monday. “Pretty close results between Florida and Illinois on mortality, but Florida was good on other things, they had good economy, good on education, so that’s fake news coming from the governor. ”

Mulligan said the lockdowns had drastic impacts on chronic illnesses that persist today.

And while children are resilient to a lot, they are impacted by the poor education outcomes stemming from the stay-at-home orders.

“If they were in public school especially," they fell "way behind and that’s going to be with them for a lifetime,” Mulligan said.

Gov. J.B. Pritzker announces "shelter-in-place" order for Illinois at a news conference in Chicago on Friday, March 20, 2020. - Courtesy of BlueRoomStream

Economic indicators show Illinois continues to lag the rest of the nation in recovery with around 40,000 fewer jobs today compared to before the stay-at-home orders three years ago.

State Rep. Adam Niemerg, R-Dieterich, said despite the state getting billions in federal tax funds for pandemic relief, “the last three years have been a complete failure.”

“There wasn’t one conversation about reigning in the governor’s orders or having the legislature, the equal branch of government, actually discuss what was happening with the COVID mitigation standards,” Niemerg said.

For the years through the pandemic, Democratic legislative leaders said they had faith in Pritzker’s management of the COVID-19 orders. The orders led to various lawsuits against mask mandates, vaccine mandates, business closures and other executive orders.

While most states across the country have lifted their COVID orders, consecutive monthly COVID disaster proclamations issued since March 2020 continue in Illinois but are expected to expire May 11 alongside federal proclamations.

Illinois public health officials say there have been about 40,000 confirmed or probable COVID-19 deaths since 2020.

Greg Bishop reports on Illinois government and other issues for The Center Square. Bishop has years of award-winning broadcast experience and hosts the WMAY Morning Newsfeed out of Springfield.