By: Ted Dabrowski and John Klingner
1. Take a look at the map below and you can’t help but notice how much of an outlier Illinois is when it comes to children and masks. It’s just one of 13 states, soon to be nine, to still impose a statewide mandate requiring all students to wear masks in school.
Thirty-seven states have no statewide school mask mandate at all. That includes all of Illinois’ neighbors.
And Illinois is about to become even more isolated. The governors of New Jersey, Connecticut, Oregon, Delaware and now Massachusetts have all announced they’ll drop their school mask mandates in a few weeks. New York is also said to be reviewing its mask mandates.
*Graphic updated to reflect Massachusetts’ planned end of its school mask mandate on Feb. 28.
Gov. Pritzker, meanwhile, has set no deadline for ending Illinois’ school mask requirements. In fact, he refuses to even discuss the specific metrics it would take for him to drop his mandate.
2. The data since Omicron’s arrival shows no obvious benefit of masks for children when comparing Illinois to those of its neighboring states. You’d expect to see lower pediatric hospitalizations in Illinois compared to its neighbors if masks were effective as Gov. Pritzker claims. But the graphic below, highlighting publicly available CDC pediatric hospitalization data, shows that’s not the case.
Illinois has run in the middle of the pack in terms of hospitalizations across the entire Omicron period, doing better than some neighbors and worse than others.
That comparison to neighboring states is not conclusive scientific proof in itself, but that proof is there in at least 150 studies on masks and the harm they cause. The science has changed against masks.
All the evidence shows Gov. Pritzker is far behind the curve on masking schoolchildren. He can expect growing pressure from parents as his restrictions become ever more untenable.
Read more from Wirepoints:
- Omicron shows Illinois masks and mandates aren’t working: A comparison of Illinois versus its neighbors
- Politics Getting Bad For Those Using Children As Human Covid Shields
- Nearly 40 percent of all Illinois COVID deaths in the last month are breakthroughs. What gives?
- Americans in 39 states aren’t subjected to a mask mandate. Why are Illinoisans?
A set of state lawmakers want to extend CPS’ current school closing moratorium to February 1, 2027 – the same year CPS is set to transition to a fully-elected school board. That means schools like Manley High School, with capacity for more than 1,000 students but enrollment of just 78, can’t be closed for anther three years. The school spends $45,000 per student, but just 2.4% of students read at grade level.
Hopefully, all media will get the message, in Illinois, too.
Ted joined Tom Miller of WJPF to talk about Illinois’ highest-in-the-nation property taxes, why lawmakers don’t want to touch the tax’s cost drivers, just how much Illinoisans’ tax burden has grown over the decades, why Gov. Pritzker failed to meet his promise to reform property taxes, and more.
The teachers unions have Pritzker in their pocket. I won’t comment on how big a bulge that is, but nothing else can explain his refusal to do what everyone else recognizes makes science sense. It goes beyond simple lack of explanation: he won’t even tell anyone what metrics he’s using to decide when the masks will come off. He’s waiting for the unions’ blessing, but can’t admit it.. He will either get it eventually, or it will become such a big campaign issue that he will fear the only thing he does fear: not getting four more (God help us)… Read more »
Bingo! It’s got to be the teachers unions. CTU, NEA, and IFT. Most rank and file employees are ready for the mandates to go away, but this is political now and the union leadership is exerting control. Something has to be done about the clout that public employee unions have in Illinois government. We need a strong governor who will stand up to them. I can’t see how Pritzker thinks this is good policy. I think he’s just gauging the power of organized labor’s leaders to churn out votes for him. But the kids of the rank and file go… Read more »
Remember the constitutional amendment on the ballot in November making collective bargaining agreements immune from tampering, even by legislation. If this monstrosity passes, any future governor will be as bad as Toilets because unions will trump anything.
The teachers give unions a bad name. It all stems from the political contributions. Public unions should be prevented from even endorsing a candidate let alone collect money for them. This incestuous relationship has bankrupted our state.
Citizens United has also done damage to our political system. The corporation and the PACS by influence. The people have no influence. No one cares what the people actually want
He’s stuck between a rock and a hard place. Endure wrath of the teachers unions or endure the wrath of angry legions of parents.
JB has made his decision.
I think you are correct. He is waiting for marching orders from the unions. But why are the unions so adamant about masks? Randi Weingarten said yesterday that the “off ramp” should only come when there is no transmisssion, which essentially means “never”. It’s hard to think of a benign reason for teachers wanting their students to be forced to wear masks.
Forcing others to wear masks is an integral part of the progressive ideology.
And to prove allegiance to communist/marxist ideology.
Wearing masks is dehumanizing. Much easier to control beings when they look like automatons. And since they don’t have a gender anymore, we’re already halfway there…. Whoa-oh! Livin on a prayer! Oh wait, can’t do that either.
Illinois needs a Trucker Convoy to shut down Pritzger and Democrats!
This guy repulses me. I detest him. This is simply the cold political calculation of doing the bidding of teacher’s unions, and nothing more. The unions remember, and he’s gambling that enough parents will forget or not care, when the vote comes. Trash him at every turn, and remind everyone you know what and who he is, come election time. Never forgive him for casting our children’s needs aside as an afterthought. The unions will be out to vote for him with nearly 100% of their members, and the ads they pay for will attempt to make you all forget… Read more »
I would give you 100 thumbs up if I could! It’s difficult to handle this guy’s behavior. Good character and leadership it is not!
On Monday evening, the CTU sent a letter to its members reaffirming their commitment to „safety” protocols earned thru a collective bargaining agreement. I wish they had been this concerned about my safety when I had kids bringing weapons to school. But I digress…. Included in the letter was a link to an „Anti-Safety Reporting Form”, which is exactly what it sounds like – a way for members to secretly report „overt or egregious acts of ‚anti-safety’ behavior” committed by colleagues, students, parents, or visitors. Quote: „ Against what policy is your school experiencing significant or increased resistance?” You can… Read more »
Spot on! And don’t forget, this fall there will be a proposed constitutional amendment on the ballot that would give unions a preferred status, which would deny anyone from taking their benefits away from them. So Gov.Toilets isn’t the only thing to worry about in November. That atrocity needs to be defeated just like the progressive income tax.
Mark – the map is interesting but would be more telling if it were a heat map of school districts with strict mask guidelines. Just because the state is not mandating it doesn’t mean it is not mandated at more localized levels. I have no idea what such a map would look like but am interested to see how schools in non-state mandated regions are positioned.
Yet the unions and the free stuff army will lock together on election day to elect the King
Down state voters will sleep in saying the Illinois way is everywhere
He doesn’t understand that “L’etat, c’est moi” went out with Louis XIV.
He has a lot of money to gain by keeping it going. Citizens arrest for breaking the law, he’s bonded.
Dear authors, NO, the science of masks has NOT changed. Let us all strive to keep facts and truth straight and not muddy up the waters. Masks have NEVER been effective! Some of us may have thought they were because we did not research the topic, and were made to think so, because that’s what we were told. Very early on when this all began, I began to read and research, and one of the thousands of things I learned is that masks do not stop viruses. I learned that the main reason surgeons wear masks when doing a procedure… Read more »
“There is no tyranny so hateful as a vulgar and anonymous tyranny. It is all-permeating, all-thwarting; it blasts every budding novelty and sprig of genius with its omnipresent and fierce stupidity. Such a headless people has the mind of a worm and the claws of a dragon.”
Love that! Thanks
As much as I want the children unmasked. I want governor Flintstone to end all mask mandate and the rest of the totalitarians to get rid of vaccine requirements. F both jbs
That would be perfect, wouldn’t it?
If jb issues order for schools to go maskless, what’s jb going to do with all his teachers union friends? In a sneaky move in January, he vetoed teachers paid covid sick leave bill but then turned around and created a paid covid sick day “initiative” for teachers and staff. Under “initiative” all a teacher has to do to claim paid sick days is say they or their kids possibly came in contact with unmasked kid and they can sit at home getting paid….watch tons of teachers claiming they’ve been exposed to covid via unmasked kids and a violation of… Read more »
The evil driving masking is second only to the evil driving injections.
Masks can come on and off.
Experimental gene therapies and the injuries they bring? Not so much.
Yet you still have “educated” parents clamoring for more.
I agree with you, but only partly. This whole ball of wax has been and will continue to be very destructive. We are very slowly learning of the negatives that are coming to light as a result of the whole mess they have made out mainly blue states) of locking us down and restricting us. We already know about increases in depression, divorce, suicide, alcoholism, drug abuse and deaths from it, loss of jobs, kids falling behind in school, kids forgetting how to read, even speak, as I was watching something that was talking of the problems kids face as… Read more »