Governor Pritzker’s condescending defense of failing ‘same ‘ol same ‘ol’ COVID policy – Wirepoints

By: Mark Glennon*

Craig Dellimore of WBBM radio asked the right question of Gov. JB Pritzker at a Monday press conference. The conference was devoted almost entirely to the administration’s central message on COVID, which is to get vaccinated, boosted and wear a mask. Wall asked:

What evidence are you seeing that the appeals you are making, and other healthcare professionals here are making, that this is having any effect? Lets face it, as we were coming in here there was a demonstration downstairs – and considerably more people are in this group — saying they are against the vaccines, against mandates. Is this having any effect?

Pritzker smirked as the question was asked, and said, “Those are not the audience for what we are saying. It is clear to me that those who are willing to protest against the vax or against masks are not listening to the science,” he said contemptuously. Instead, he said, the audience is people on the fence who are perhaps a bit uncertain and confused about what they’ve read on social media. The video is here.

Good luck with that. It won’t work. It’s the latest claim to monopoly ownership of science and dismissal of dissenters as slack-jawed, homicidal idiots.  That’s routine from Pritzker and many others.

Is Pritzker unaware of the ever-growing body of expert opinion that questions the vax-boost-mask solution?

Is he unaware of how broad and deep public opposition is to what so many view as both heavy-handed and wrong-headed government response to COVID?

Is he unaware of massive vaccine protest scenes like that shown here, which are common in cities across the world?

Is he unaware that tens of millions of people have flocked to sources like Joe Rogan’s podcast because the government has blown its credibility? (And don’t expect to find much of that on YouTube or through Google because they are suppressing it and many other challenges to government policy.)

Is he right to just let people risk death, as he apparently sees the consequence for those who “aren’t his audience,” if they conclude that his vax policy is wrong?

Ridiculing dissenters does not work. It has backfired. Authoritarian dogma is losing. Most Americans now oppose requiring vaccination for service and employment, a policy in place for Chicago and Cook County service establishments and government jobs which Pritzker says he supports.

This is not, however, only about effective rhetoric and persuasion. The substance of the Pritzker Administration’s COVID policy is falling apart.

What is that policy?

It’s the “same ‘ol same ‘ol” and that’s a direct quote from Illinois Department of Public Health Director Ngozi Ezike at that Monday press conference. “We do know how to prevent further spread of the disease. The same ‘ol same ‘ol. Get vaxxed, boosted, masked, avoid crowds, get tested. We just need to implement.”

That’s not working.

First, the new Omicron variant is ripping through both the vaccinated and unvaccinated population alike. Massachusetts alone reported 45,000 breakthrough infections for the week that ended January 1. Illinois doesn’t report breakthrough cases, but just reported another 153 breakthrough deaths for the most recent week.

Even the Washington Post, which typically defends the Biden Administration mimicked by Pritzker, says Biden has “a breakthrough problem,” though the Post chalked it up mostly to a communication failure. They added that it’s not easy to get a full breakthrough picture in part because the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention doesn’t report meaningful numbers on breakthroughs, which is inexcusable but true.

Second, people are livid that treatments are not readily available. The stress on hospitals is real. Treatments, if available and routinely prescribed, would be reducing hospitalizations.

But Illinois and many other states have systematically and deliberately ignored therapeutics from the start of the pandemic, and that’s unconscionable. They are highly effective for avoiding hospitalization but rarely if ever promoted or even discussed, as we recently detailed here. Monoclonal antibody treatments were approved and found highly effective over a year ago. Today, some antibody treatments are not effective against the new Omicron variant, but Omicron is not a serious death threat, and there’s no excuse for not making them readily available to at-risk victims when symptoms indicate the more deadly Delta variant.

Remember 2020 when Pritzker would use his daily COVID press conferences to harangue the Trump Administration for its alleged failure to supply personal protective equipment?

Why isn’t Pritzker doing the same regarding therapeutics? Because politics infuses his COVID policy. Illinois reflexively adopts CDC guidelines as they are issued, garbled and contradictory as they often are, most recently with recommendations for isolation and quarantine.

Pritzker and every governor with a conscience should not only be resisting but ridiculing some of what is coming out of the Biden Administration. This week Biden made three astonishingly irresponsible claims in a video clip of under one minute. This continues to be a pandemic of the unvaccinated, he said, vaccines are needed to protect kids and children too young to be vaccinated should only be surrounded by vaccinated kids.

What awful things to say. The pandemic is undisputedly now among both the vaccinated and unvaccinated. Even CDC Director Rochelle Walensky has acknowledged that the vaccinated spread COVID. Kids face no more risk from COVID than they do from ordinary flu. And now playmates who are unvaccinated should be shunned? Following Biden Administration guidance is no longer just folly. It is monkey-see-monkey-do.

Third, the Pritzker and the Biden Administrations still refuse to acknowledge the power of natural immunity, which is now affirmed by 144 research studies. Vaccine resistance for those with that immunity is entirely reasonable.

Fourth, neither federal nor state health authorities ever emphasize what is by far the biggest risk factor for COVID, aside from age — obesity, which is a separate epidemic in itself. Aside from COVID deaths, it is responsible for a long list of other, severe health problems. Imagine how much better off we would be if the message on COVID had from the start had included stern warnings to lose weight. But there has been no room for that on the two-trick pony of vaccines and masks.

Finally, isn’t it time for the government to say firmly that commonly worn cloth masks don’t work? “If everyone is just wearing a cloth mask or just a surgical mask, it won’t make any difference with this highly-transmissible [Omicron] variant,” says Monica Gandhi, an infectious disease specialist at the University of California, San Francisco. Many other experts have said the same. She recommends N95 masks.

How many at-risk people have been infected because they relied on the government’s constant message that masks and vaccines keep them safe, and as a consequence reduce other precautionary measures? We will never know, but the number is no doubt large.

Vaccines do reduce the chances that a COVID infection will result in hospitalization or death. Experts appear unanimous on that, so why can’t Illinois make its case based just on that and whatever else they have evidence for?

At Monday’s press conference, Dr. Ezike at least framed the debate politely, acknowledging the concerns of vaccine skeptics and other dissenters, briefly addressing some of them, and spoke of more than vaccines and masks.

But Pritzker should take the same approach, and both he and Ezike need to put up their evidence for the science they claim is certain. They need to respond specifically to the growing number of studies and credible experts coming to different conclusions. Most importantly, they need to adjust their policy as the evidence has changed, because the same ‘ol same ‘ol isn’t working.

They should read these words. They are not from somebody Pritzker should sneer off, and they represent the view of a large and growing number of us. They are from Thomas Harrington, a professor at Trinity College:

What has changed is that there has been a concerted psychological campaign to effectively insert abstract and often empirically questionable paradigms of sickness between individual citizens and their understanding of their own bodies, paradigms expressly designed to remove the locus of control from that citizen and his or her instincts and deposit it in the hands of some combination of medical and governmental authority…. 

We are, under the pressure of what is arguably the most ambitious and well-coordinated perception management campaign in history, having some of our more basic perceptual and behavioral instincts rapidly bred out of our lives.

*Mark Glennon is founder of Wirepoints.

Correction: The piece incorrectly attributed the question directed to Gov. Pritzker to Craig Wall of ABC7. The proper reporter was Craig Dellimore of WBBM radio.

Following are some of our recent columns on COVID and Illinois:

• Why No Discussion Of COVID Treatments In Illinois?
• Running out of hospital beds is the biggest danger of Omicron? Then why has the Pritzker administration let the supply of ICU beds collapse by nearly 1,000?
• Indefensible: Vilification And Hectoring To Vaccinate Children Expands
• A loss of democratic norms in Illinois: 24 straight Executive Orders over nearly two years
• Hey, Pritzker, leave them kids alone
• No, the downturn in Illinois COVID does not mean Pritzker’s mandates are working
• Illinois’ Gov. Pritzker strips school districts, parents of control over masks with new mandate
• The Delta variant and its limited impact on Illinois children
• Antibody Treatments For Covid Work. Why Aren’t They Being Promoted?