Thank God it's Phase 4 Friday

‘Now is the time,’ says Dr. Emily Landon, ‘to take advantage of the numbers that look so great for Illinois’

Gov. Pritzker cheers the state’s move to the fourth phase of the plan to Restore Illinois Thursday in a news conference at the Thompson Center, joined by a sign-language translator. (Illinois.gov)

Gov. Pritzker cheers the state’s move to the fourth phase of the plan to Restore Illinois Thursday in a news conference at the Thompson Center, joined by a sign-language translator. (Illinois.gov)

By Ted Cox

The governor and his top medical advisers declared Illinois ready to move to the fourth phase of the Restore Illinois plan to reopen the economy Friday as the state continues to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic and the economic collapse brought on by efforts to contain the coronavirus.

Called “Revitalization,” the fourth phase means the reopening of health and fitness centers, indoor dining, movie theaters, and museums, just to name the major businesses affected — all with altered capacity limits and continued restrictions, led by mitigation efforts such as the need to wear face coverings in public.

“Starting tomorrow, hundreds of thousands more Illinoisans will be able to return to work,” Gov. Pritzker said at a news conference Thursday at the Thompson Center in Chicago.

“You did it,” said Public Health Director Dr. Ngozi Ezike, who cited how Illinois was being credited across the nation with “getting it right” in containing the coronavirus and gradually reopening the economy.

“I think now is the time … to take advantage of the numbers that look so great for Illinois,” said Dr. Emily Landon of the University of Chicago.

Ezike reported 894 new cases of COVID-19 statewide Thursday, bringing the state total to 139,434. Forty-one new deaths attributed to the coronavirus took the state toll to 6,810. But COVID hospitalizations remained low, and all regions of the state remained on course to move to the next phase of reopening. The state also topped 30,000 tests in a day for the first time Thursday.

“Any pride in our success has to be tempered by grief,” Pritzker said, citing the especially harsh impact the pandemic has had on the African-American community and his own personal loss in the death of Evanston activist Hecky Powell to COVID-19. “We have to continue to look out for one another.”

That was the main message of Thursday’s news conference on the eve of the move to Phase 4: continue with the mitigation efforts that have thus far succeeded in limiting the pandemic, even as restrictions are eased.

“People are still being infected and people are still losing their lives,” Ezike said, as she urged Illinoisans to observe what she’s come to call the three W’s: wash your hands, watch your social distancing, wear a face covering. “The power still remains in all of our hands,” she added. “As we open a lot of our state, the motto is to start low and go slow. … Let’s continue to do the things that will help us mitigate the risk.”

Ezike and Landon both emphasized the need to wear a mask in public, especially when it’s difficult to maintain social distancing of 6 feet apart. Ezike compared not wearing a mask to playing Russian roulette, gambling with one’s life, while Landon dismissed those who’ve resisted wearing a mask as a “political statement.”

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“I think now is the time … to take advantage of the numbers that look so great for Illinois.”

Dr. Emily Landon (Illinois.gov)

“It’s essential that we wear these masks in public buildings and public places,” Landon said. “Here in Illinois we know that COVID is no hoax.”

Pritzker credited the new guidance to wear a mask at the beginning of May with the state turning the corner in lowering the spread of COVID-19, and he too called on Illinoisans to observe the three W’s, saying, “That is how we maintain the trajectory we’ve been on even as we reopen.”

Landon, who became one of the early stars of the governor’s daily coronavirus briefings when she made the case in March for the initial stay-at-home order, said that too was critical at the time. “Staying home was an important tool to tame a raging firestorm of infection,” she said. “And there will still be embers and even brushfires that could force us to pull back to an earlier phase.

“But what we must avoid is a conflagration that sends us back to our homes and threatens our health-care system and our economy,” she added. “We have to learn to extinguish these small sparks by starving them of the fuel they need in order to spread. We do this by wearing masks, by keeping our distance, by washing our hands, staying home when we’re sick, staying home when we need to be.”

Ezike spoke of “coexisting with COVID” and Landon suggested that might even mean “getting cozy with COVID,” but they explained that meant recognizing the continued danger of infection and taking personal responsibility to avoid it. “Now is a more forgiving time to move forward,” Landon said, given the abundance of outdoor activities at relatively little risk. She added that it was a time to “reset our social norms” to embrace mitigation efforts.

“We’ve seen what’s happened in other states that have allowed politics or short-term thinking to drive decision-making,” Pritzker said, referring to how almost half the states are now seeing cases on the rise, especially along the Sun Belt from South Carolina and Florida to Texas and Arizona. “Many other states are now seeing significant increases in cases, hospitalizations, and intensive-care bed usage and they’re being forced to move backward and stay at home — that’s not the story in Illinois. Here, we have been gradually restoring business and leisure activities in a highly deliberate manner, guided by doctors’ advice. Illinoisans are following the mitigations that we can each do ourselves, like wearing face coverings, keeping 6 feet distance between us, and washing our hands frequently. It’s because of the people of Illinois that we’re seeing a trajectory of relative success where other parts of the country are not.

“Everything that we’ve gone through over the last three and a half months has led us to this point where things are going well and in the right direction and that allows us to gradually reopen,” Pritzker added. “But I’m not afraid to move us backward to the things that we’ve done in the past” should the pandemic spike anew in Illinois.

Economically, Pritzker said he’s trying to “balance the interests” of landlords and renters, but he remained opposed to evictions and said the state is working to provide renters with assistance when necessary. “We do not want people to become homeless in this difficult crisis,” he said. “We’ve got to protect the people who are most vulnerable to this virus and most vulnerable to the financial impact.”

Without overtly blaming President Trump for the lack of federal leadership that has led some states to see new spikes in the pandemic, Pritzker again had harsh words for the administration’s overall response. He said there was no vindication in the state’s success so far in handling the pandemic, adding that many governors “have been as frank as I have about the difficulty that they’ve had with the federal government not being of any assistance — indeed, a kind of hindrance” in getting personal protective equipment and other critical medical supplies. “Unfortunately, the White House has been an utter and complete failure at delivering what states needed at the most critical time during this pandemic.”

Pritzker said earlier in the week in talking about schools resuming in the fall that a move to the fifth phase, basically removing all restrictions, would only come with a very effective treatment for COVID-19 or a vaccine.