“We expected a big turnout, but nothing prepared me for this,” Central Illinois Foodbank Executive Director Pam Molitoris said. More than 1,000 cars wrapped around the fairgrounds from Happy Hollow all the way around by the Illinois Department of Natural Resources.

Volunteers said they were shocked by the turnout.

The Northern Illinois Food Bank had prepared four semitrailer trucks of food for distribution, but by 11 a.m. they had to bring in two more trucks full of food. Communications Manager Elizabeth Gartman said, “The need has skyrocketed. Up to 35% of our clients are new to us.”

Comment: This would seem to answer why so many deaths and sicknesses are being attributed to COVID-19.

“Burr Ridge is probably going to lose approximately $1.6 million dollars in sales tax and revenue and place of eating taxes,” Mayor Gary Grasso said. In a village with a budget of $8 million, that is no small chunk of change. Thus, Grasso and other DuPage County leaders are drafting their own plans to reopen ahead of the state’s schedule.

Comment: No mention by Crain’s in this endorsement of Pritzker’s order of any concerns about his claimed right to extend his emergency orders forever, or about the gating requirements for reopening that likewise may never be met. And the self-contradictions are brazen. “The all-or-nothing-ism surrounding government response to the virus is a false choice,” they say, yet they make their case against this straw man — “the expectation in some quarters that all we must do to get the economy moving again is to throw the doors open.”

“I am baffled by what appears to be an abandonment of the original strategy to fight Covid19,” Streit said Wednesday on Facebook.

Streit said the new five-phase regional plan that was “instituted without legislative approval” seems to abandon the previous strategy of staying home to flatten the curve.

“How much can we tax our way out? How much can we beg from federal taxpayers? How much can we put at risk Other People’s Money?”

The tradeoff isn’t between lives and livelihoods. The policy goal has to be to protect both as much as possible. Deploy more personal protective equipment, greatly increase testing, build surge capability to handle flare-ups, and isolate society’s most vulnerable to keep hospitals from getting overwhelmed. But for heaven’s sake reopen the economy so we don’t consign millions to years of poverty.

“We implore the governor to reconsider.”

Springfield Convention and Visitors Bureau director Scott Dahl said that the 11 days of the fair are among the busiest for the city’s hotels, which typically see about 9,000 room nights during that span.

For 43 Wisconsin Republican lawmakers, the urge to bash Illinois and go on record against bailouts for state governments during the coronavirus pandemic was just too good to pass up.

Laying the burden on taxpayers, students, public employees and consumers of public services is untenable.