Last month, I called for a reckoning, including a number of observations that "could be applied with little amendment to the potbellied dictator in Springfield." At the moment, he is not issuing new ukases. Perhaps in not issuing ukases, he is doing no additional harm. "Revived mandates remind everyone that governments have done far more harm than good in the pandemic."
There was harm. Illinois Policy Institute managing editor Brad Weisenstein takes stock.
A governor should not be allowed to issue blanket orders for two years.That last sentence refers to the Grail Café, one of those fancy food startups in the South Loop. DeKalb doesn't have that sort of arch deluxe clientele, it's the convenience stores and some of the pizzerias and a pho restaurant that served generous portions that are among the casualties.
As we mark the second anniversary of the Illinois pandemic shutdown, we should take time to mourn. We lost more than 33,000 people we cared about. We lost more than 1.2 million total jobs. We lost control of our government. We lost butterfly tea.
Based Politics evaluated the potbellied dictator as only the fourth worst socialist governor. "The Democratic governor of Illinois, Pritzker’s state fared woefully in economic performance, coming in at 48th place. However, his executive policies weren’t that authoritarian, at 36th. Yet the overall record of the state was dragged down by the governor’s dismal fiscal policy ranking, which came in at 47th." A research paper written by Phil Kerpen, Casey Mulligan, and Stephen Moore awarded Illinois the highest failing grade among the fifty states, evaluating the health, education, and economic effects of the various approaches to containing the Wuhan coronavirus. Because one of the authors is affiliated with the National Bureau of Economic Research, the working paper is available there. The paper might be out for review at a scholarly journal, although the Heritage and Committee to Unleash Prosperity affiliations of some of the authors might be grounds to view the work with caution, its commonsense conclusion, “states which maximized the individual freedoms of business owners, consumers, workers and parents – and allowed their citizens to make their own risk assessments without government mandates – had the best performance” notwithstanding. Just another win for the economic way of thinking.
A service called Worldometers has been keeping track of coronavirus infections and deaths, disaggregated in a number of ways. With local, state, and federal governments in the United States changing the way they count infections (and they might be rethinking how they classify deaths) I'm not sure how valid any numbers, even from a service consistently used from month to month, is.
The latest report from Sweden counts 2,495,966 infections, up by 29,389 from last month, and 18,572 deaths, a change of 807 from that report.
The latest report from Illinois counts 3,094,485 infections, an increase of 46,443 over last month (it's an increase in the increase as well, if you look at rates of change) and 37,815 deaths, adding 1,817 to the Pritzker Body Count in one month. That's another increase in the increase. Taken together, though, the absence of new ukases does not appear to be leading to the governor's margin of terror getting worse.
As of this afternoon, the state counts around 21.7 million doses of the various vaccines administered; they've updated their tally to disaggregate among finished and partial vaccinations. The state no longer counts the scary variants. The current mix of infections is high on Xi Omicron, with the 10 April tally showing a return of Delta..
These posts will continue, less frequently, as long as update information is available.
At St. Patrick's Day, the governor trailed by 19,580.
At Valentine's Day, the governor trailed by 19,533.
At the National Day of Service, the governor trailed by 17,062.
Note the time series: a margin of terror that used to be growing by hundreds in a week was growing by less, that is, until the ukases went back into effect. We're still adding around a thousand in a month. The details for earlier in 2021 and the end of 2020 are on page 2. Tell me again how all this micromanagement is for our benefit?
2021 ...
At Beethoven's birthday, the governor trailed by 14,796.
At Veterans Day, the governor trailed by 13,981.
At Leif Erikson Day, the governor trailed by 13,101.
At the start of the professional football season, the governor trailed by 12,307.
At Roller Coaster Day, the governor trailed by 11,502.
As of 7 June, 10,887.
As of 1 June, 10,810.
As of 24 May, 10,645.
As of 17 May, 10,520.
As of 10 May, 10,417.
As of 3 May, 10,310.
As of 26 April, 10,216.
As of 19 April, 10,167.
As of 12 April, 10,169.
As of 5 April, 10,167.
As of 29 March, 10,125.
As of 22 March, 10.095.
As of 15 March, 10.070.
As of 8 March, 10,017.
As of 1 March, 9,933.
As of 22 February, 9,857.
As of 15 February, 9,693.
As of 8 February, 9,623.
As of 1 February, 9,662.
As of 25 January, 9,739.
As of 18 January, 9,727.
As of 11 January, 9, 860.
As of 4 January, 9,595.
2020 ...
As of 28 December, 9,057.
As of 21 December, 8,414.
As of 14 December, 7,815.
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