Update 10/26/2020 11:47 pm CDT - ... and now the State has shut down indoor dining in suburban Cook County, where I live. I better get my hair cut this week, while I can!
---
Update 10/23/2020 12:30 pm CDT - The new restrictions for bars and restaurants for these suburban counties (no indoor dining/service allowed) go into effect today. Our local suburban newspaper has identified a number of owners who are vowing to defy the new rules, saying the restrictions will mean the death of their businesses. One owner claims that it is not restaurants that are responsible for the recent spike in area COVID-19 cases, pointing to private gatherings as being the chief culprits. [Update 10/24/2020 9:46 am CDT - our local suburban newspaper ran a follow-up story today in which the governor's office refutes that contention: based on contact tracing, "[b]ars and restaurants led the state in places where infected people had worked or visited between August and September".] Another objects that restaurants and bars are being singled out for these restrictions while casinos are allowed to stay open. The point about casinos being exempted does seem to have some merit, and one can't help recalling that casinos generate revenue for our cash-starved state. [Update 10/24/2020: today's newspaper article notes that in fact "casinos are restricted to 25% capacity, had their hours of operation cut, and cannot serve food or beverages for on-site consumption".]
During the warm summer months, I dined outdoors a few times at local restaurants. We've also dined indoors two or three times, most recently last weekend because we wished to sneak in one more dining-out date before any restrictions were reimposed. My personal observation is that, at least at the restaurants we patronized, the safety precautions being taken were ok but not stellar. Tables should be widely separated; some establishments are better at this than others - and of course all of them have a strong economic motive to shoehorn in as many tables as possible. We customers are supposed to wear masks when we walk in the door, when we move to and from our table, and when we interact with wait staff (all of whom are masked all the time). The business of taking off a mask at the table to eat but then putting it back on when the waiter approaches, works only so-so; if one is not seated facing the right direction, one is not aware that the waiter has appeared at one's table until s/he already is there.
The governor, so far, isn't backing down from the new restrictions, and is saying they'll be enforced. It's not clear yet how widespread the defiance will be - nor, for these places that stay open, whether their customers will even show up to take part in forbidden indoor dining. It's worth recalling that, contrary to some political rhetoric heard on campaign trails these days, the sharp economic downturn from last spring was not caused by government shutdowns; consumers voluntarily started staying indoors and stopped patronizing retail establishments before any government restrictions were imposed. Now that COVID-19 is spiking in most states across the US, it remains to be seen whether American consumers are willing to curtail their retail spending again, or whether our discipline and solidarity has irreparably frayed.
---
Headline on the website of our local suburban newspaper: "'We're now entering a new wave of this virus': counties will face restrictions starting Friday".
New cases of COVID-19 reached 3,714 Tuesday and 41 additional deaths were reported as Gov. J.B. Pritzker announced DuPage, Kane, Kankakee and Will counties will face restrictions effective Friday amid a resurgence of the virus.
The four counties, comprising two separate public health regions, have surpassed an 8% COVID-19 test positivity rate for three days, which typically triggers mitigations. Those will include temporarily suspending indoor service at restaurants and bars or limiting gatherings to 25 people or less in an effort to reduce risk of spreading the virus.
The four counties named in the news story include areas of suburbs, exurbs and rural areas. My own area is not included (I happen to live in Cook County). Nor do any of those counties overlap the Chicago Archdiocese, which is in Cook and Lake Counties.*
On the whole, Illinois has been doing poorly for the last 1-2 weeks. Infections have been spiking, the rate of infection has been rising steadily, and deaths also have been going up. Below I've pasted charts of three of the primary metrics I've been tracking: Daily New Infections; Rate of New Infections; and Daily Deaths. In the charts below, the jagged lines comprise daily readings, while the smoother lines are seven-day moving averages. Note in particular the rightmost tail of each line; that shows the most recent readings. All of these may be somewhat counter-intuitive in that "up and to the right" is bad; we want to see downward trends in all these, rather than the upward trends shown on each chart.
* Three of the counties affected by the governor's new restrictions are in the Joliet Diocese, while the fourth (Kane County) is in the Rockford Diocese. Each diocese has its own reopening plans and capacity limits, so Kane County's church attendance limits already were different than the other three. To further complicate matters, the state is divided into 11 zones for purposes of tracking coronavirus infections, with DuPage (Joliet Diocese) and Kane (Rockford Diocese) Counties in one zone, and Will and Kankakee Counties (both in Joliet Diocese) in another zone. State guidelines can differ from one zone to another. Bottom line is: I haven't been able to determine with any certainty what the impact of any of this will be on church attendance and other parish gatherings.
Ohio has basically the same problem. At today's briefing (they are conducted each Tuesday and Thursday) DeWine produced a map for each of the last three weeks of the Midwest that showed red exploding from Wisconsin into Illinois and now into Indiana and Ohio.
ReplyDeleteThe most troubling is the upsurge in recent days in hospital admissions for Covid-19. Ohio has exceeded all previous records including the spikes in April and July. There have been press reports out of South West Ohio that say hospitals are two weeks away from having to shut down elective surgery as was done in April.
Ohio has developed good plans for managing hospital surges, however no one (not the least the Governor) wants to test them.
Churches are not at risk because Ohio has always exempted First Amendment assemblies from its restrictions. However DeWine has done a good job of talking religious organizations into observing restrictions without mandating them. DeWine has not been so successful recently talking Republicans into observing social distancing, masks, etc. He and the Lt. Gov. were booed when they wore masks and urged others to do so.
Jack, every time you tell us about what a good job DeWine is doing, I get excited :-). How do I get him to run for president?!
DeleteAn article in this morning's Chicago Tribune looked at increased hospitalizations in the Chicago area. Basically, we have twice as many COVID patients now as compared to a couple of weeks ago. But that is still a relatively small fraction of the hospitalizations we had last spring. So overall, we have more positive COVID tests now than we did even at the peak of last spring's first wave, but only a small fraction of hospitalizations. So far.
I think he would make a good president, too. If the Dems had the House and Senate, I would vote for him over Hilary or Biden but not Obama or Sanders.
DeleteTake a look at his press conferences. They are really done well. Maybe he is developing the showman skills that helped Reagan and Trump.
https://ohiochannel.org/collections/governor-mike-dewine
He has made clear that most of the mistakes that he has made resulted from not consulting with the experts who really knew the issues. As a public planner, I think he has done an excellent job of getting all the various stakeholders on board during the pandemic from health care to schools to business. He has delegated to his Lt. Governor significant areas such as business and sports.
He has also used his show to advocate for 1) gun control, 2) police reform, 3) minority issues in ways that would appeal to both Democrats and Republicans. He might actually accomplish some of those things if he wasn’t stuck with a Republican House and Senate.
He is Catholic and a good family man.
DeWine is well thought of in Michigan in Democratic circles. Ditto John Kasich. Our Michitucky Republicans think they're RINOs. But, yes, both of them seem like decent public servants.
DeleteThe numbers in our state are also going in the wrong direction. Public gatherings such as churches were being allowed 75% occupancy. Now they are walked back to 50%. I don't think it will affect attendance much for our patish. We were still under a dispensation for Sunday/weekend obligation. We have overflow capacity in the social hall where there is livestreaming. It has only been used a couple or three times. A lot of people aren't back yet.
ReplyDeleteI am surprised the counties at the Illinois-Wisconsin state line are not most affected by high infection rates. The Upper Peninsula is almost totally red now because of the back-and-forth with Wisconsin. Chippewa County is an exception. Wisconsinites don't get that far west, and the Canadian border, where there is normally a lot of traffic, is closed to non-essential travel.
ReplyDeleteFriends in the U.P. tell me that noncompliance with the mandatory mask policy and students returning to Michigan Tech and Northern Michigan universities partying have also contributed to the increases up there. (All public colleges and universities are struggling with student non-compliance.)
And now rural Wisconsin hospitals can't get regular PPE shipments, so back to one N95 mask per person per week as rural hospitals have maxed out their ICUs and the bigger towns can't take overflow.
Meantime in Michigan: Republicans won a state supreme court ruling that the ends governor's ability to declare a state of emergency without legislative approval. Now they are handing authority for COVID measures to county health departments.
Their sunny view is that some counties don't need strict measures. This at a time when every single county has seen infections on a rising trend.
The governor's would-be kidnappers lost the battle but won the war. The Republicans in the legislature agree that Gov. Gretchen has overreached her powers, and the speaker and Senate majority leader have been openly going to no-mask rallies. At least after neutering her they let her family live ...
Jean, somebody elected your governor, presumably a majority of those who voted. Does she have no support now? I notice when people talk about "overreach", it's always about something they don't like, rather than something they themselves are doing.
DeleteGov Whitmer has a lot of support--something like 70 percent a few months ago--but it's hard to know where it is now. The citizen opposition is loud, gun-toting, and sometimes violent. The Republicans control the legislature and are tying her up with a lot of court challenges.
DeleteWhitmer was abrasive when she was in the Legislature, and she has always been a creature of the Lansing-Detroit axis. I wasn't a big supporter of her, but she gets things done, and she is very tenacious on issues like infrastructure, early childhood education, and the environment.
I understand that even Europe has been experiencing a spike recently.
ReplyDeleteYes, Europe greeted cooler weather with schools open and a spike. Unlike us, they were not doing all they could to have one, though.
DeleteI posted that cynical response before I saw our goveror's ukase of yesterday:
Delete"Going forward, whatever the future may hold, school closures should be off the table."
DeSantis claimed closing schools, in an attempt to mitigate the spread of COVID-19, can damage the physical, mental and social well-being of young people.
"Let's not repeat any mistakes of the past," he said.
No, let's kill all our old people.
Still amazed at how little PA's infection rate isn't being reflected in the death rate. They are better at keeping people alive but they do that with battle casualties, too. What that subsequent life will be like, I don't know.
ReplyDeletePhilosophy now is to keep COVID victims off ventilators. Make 'em breathe.
My cousin up north has it. She partied with her friends at her cabin in the U.P. and then went to visit her family.
DeleteSo now my 85 year old aunt with Crohns is under quarantine. So is another cousin, the infected one's brother. He has leukemia, and his sister was supposed to be his stem cell donor, but that's off the table now indefinitely.
Another brother was not a match. And a third brother and I both have blood cancers and are disqualified.
No idea where all this will go.
Part of me is very concerned and part of me wants to slap my cousin silly. Why would a stem cell donor have a big party in a red zone during a pandemic.
Way off subject. This is the lede on the NYTimes Web site now.
ReplyDeletePope Francis expressed support for same-sex civil unions in remarks made in a documentary that premiered on Wednesday, a significant break from his predecessors that staked out new ground for the church in its recognition of gay people.
The remarks, coming from the leader of the Roman Catholic Church, had the potential to shift debates about the legal status of same-sex couples in nations around the globe and unsettle bishops worried that the unions threaten marriage.
“What we have to create is a civil union law. That way they are legally covered,” Francis said, reiterating his view that gay people are children of God. “I stood up for that.”
Holy cow, some heads are going to exlode!
DeleteHowever this article says that this is not a new position on the part of the pope. He is careful to call it "civil union" and not marriage.
DeleteKatherine - right.
DeleteI suppose the US already moved on, long ago, from civil unions. Possibly the same is true for most/all of the developed world?
But there are other parts of the developing world (and Russia) where human and civil rights for LGBTQs is far from secure, so this show of support is important. Just my view.
What's interesting about what Francis said is not only that he came out in favor of civil unions, but also the reason given:
Delete"“Homosexual people have the right to be in a family. They are children of God,” Francis said. “You can’t kick someone out of a family, nor make their life miserable for this. What we have to have is a civil union law; that way they are legally covered.”"
So - in my previous remark, I suggested that civil unions are a way to protect civil rights for LGBTQs. What I had in mind are items such as probate court rights, corporate health care coverage and housing rental agreements.
I'm not sure that Francis is coming at it from the same angle; he's referring to family, and (seemingly) LGBTQs getting banished from their families. I daresay that is something that many have experienced. It's not completely clear to me how civil unions address that.
Jim, I don't think he is referring to families of origin. I think he is referring to the families that they form as adults. You are on Jim McCrea's email threads, so you've seen his shares of the Fisher-Paulsen columns. Respecting civil unions would mean respecting families such as theirs.
DeleteCoincidentally my book club meeting is this evening. Our book this time is "A Forever Family" by Rob Scheer. It is about a family similar to the Fisher-Paulsens.
DeleteThis is nothing new for Pope Francis. Civil unions is what he proposed in Argentina when faced with gay marriage.
DeleteHe basically thought gays living together should have all the rights of family, e.g. ability to be on health insurance, visiting in hospitals, etc.
Jim, BTW I agree with you about this..."But there are other parts of the developing world (and Russia) where human and civil rights for LGBTQs is far from secure, so this show of support is important." And maybe it is also something to think about for the culture warriors who insist that we absolutely can't grant any quarter to what they see as attacks on the "traditional family". Nevermind that a version of the traditional family is what many gay couples want. Human rights are human rights, including the right to live one's life in peace.
Delete"I don't think he is referring to families of origin. I think he is referring to the families that they form as adults."
DeleteThat may be what he had in mind, although, the bit about, "You can't kick someone out of a family" is kind of a non-sequitur in that regard. To be sure, this is not some papal document - it's an off-the-cuff verbal remark (the mode of communication by which Francis customarily seizes the world's attention, as opposed to book-length encyclicals). So it's exactly a carefully sculpted sentence, and it's not always easy to follow the gyrations of a person's mental process when they speak (cf Joe Biden :-)).
If Francis was saying what you're saying - then he's going well beyond simple support for civil unions as a legal device to ensure civil rights. He's supporting committed unions - the thing which, traditionally, most societies have characterized as "marriage".
I wrote, regarding Francis's off-the-cuff remark, "So it's exactly a carefully sculpted sentence". Oops, missed a really important word there: meant to say, "So it's *not* exactly a carefully sculpted sentence." That'll teach me to proof-read!
DeleteI have read some kind of wacky theology which states that a committed union is morally worse than random hookups, because of an ongoing near occasion of sin. Which I can't agree with. I would think promiscuity is always worse than commitment.
DeleteWhere the church bends itself into a pretzel is insisting that every marriage should conform to the definition of the sacrament of matrimony. Which not even all straight marriages do.
DeleteKane County, where I live, had a large "maskless" Trump rally at the county fair grounds a few blocks from where I live a few weeks ago. I had been wondering what would come of it. Now the county is going into lockdown again.
ReplyDeleteThere is a new joint that opened in the neighborhood selling "sliders" (small hamburgers). I never see any customers there. But then, the staff does not wear masks. Strange, since COVID Burgers don't seem to be on the menu.
Patrick - what is the proportion of Trump / Pence to Biden / Harris signs where you live? Around here, the Biden / Harris signs (together with Black Lives Matter and Hate Has No Home Here) signs had been leading all summer. But I hopped on the bicycle yesterday and tooled through town, and saw that several Trump / Biden signs had sprouted with the fall rains. Not sure if that means that the Trump supporters have waited until the last minute to show themselves, or maybe it just means that the Republican ground game has finally reached these precincts. Traditionally, this area is split about 50/50 between Democrats and Republicans; a lot of these suburban residents have Chicago, Democratic roots. I know Kane probably is a different story.
DeleteJim, I see more Trump signs than Biden around here although the county previously went for Hillary Clinton. I think the reason many don't show Biden signs is because many Trump supporters are, well, nuts. Although I'm a gun owner, I have no desire to be drawn into a gun battle. So I have no sign either.
DeleteI was disappointed in the DeWine press conference today. Things are clearly getting serious and could become critical within a week or two. However he was still just giving a pet talk emphasizing masks, social distancing, and not being in large groups.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately we are at the place where it is obvious to me that we should be doing what he did the first time around, go into a mandatory stay at home order, and shut down non-essential business.
The last time we did that we did not do it long enough to bring the case levels down to where testing and tracking can keep things under control. We just have too many cases for that now.
When cases did rise in the summer he was able to give targeted feedback to counties and talk people into using masks without a mask order. He has issued a mask order but mainly relies on talking to get people to obey it. His talking points are mainly you got to do this for the kids to be in school and play sports.
Not much about us senior citizens. No warnings that all vulnerable people should be staying at home except for essential trips, e.g. the doctor’s office. No warnings that we are going to have to mandate everyone stay at home except for essential business. Guess he has loss his nerve now that he does not have Amy there to lead things.
I suspect he may be waiting until Trump loses the election. If the Blue Wave materializes, e.g. the Republicans lose the Senate nationally and the House here in the state, he may not have much opposition from his own party to a lockdown.
Jack - I also think that governors are reluctant to take broad actions now with the election so close (and voting already underway) for fear of influencing the election. Of course, failing to take sufficient measures also can influence voters!
DeleteI also think many of them are frightened about the possibility of another economic crash. Aid from Washington could do much to cushion another economic slowdown.
No wonder Mitch McConnell is a mask-wearing Republican. His bruised hands are evidence of blood thinner gone wrong. Blood thinner is required for atrial fibrillation. The man has morbid preconditions
ReplyDeleteYou mean in addition to lizard blood?
DeleteOh yes. Cold-blooded.
Delete