Letter: The governor's policies are going to kill our local economy

To the Editor:

The new restrictions imposed by Gov. JB Pritzker will be the death knell for many of our local restaurants and will further strain the economy by adding significantly to local unemployment.

The governor’s decision is part of what he calls a “data-driven process.” As a veteran of the technology business, including decades in Silicon Valley, I know the perils of data-driven decisions all too well. The data chosen for any such decision is too often cherry-picked, representing a small, arbitrary selection of all the data available.

The governor is focusing on the positivity rate of recent COVID-19 tests as his cherry-picked decision driver. But the benchmark he uses is as arbitrary as a game of pinning the tail on the donkey. The governor’s process is not statistically valid and not conducive to good policy for Illinois.

I work for a company that offers COVID-19 reports, and I am responsible for company strategy.

So here are some other data: the state of Illinois currently is very close to the national average of COVID-19 case growth, showing 0.7% average growth per day for the last week, compared with 0.6% nationwide.

Outside of Cook County, the state of Illinois has a total case rate slightly below the national average and a morbidity rate that is 20% below the national average. DeKalb County has a case rate that is 25% below the national average and a morbidity rate that is 20% below the national average.

Although it’s clear the COVID-19 pandemic is a serious deal, the state of things in Illinois is better than the nation overall. The people in our state seem to have adapted to it and have not let things get out of control. (DeKalb County has a case rate that is 50% below that of Florida, for example.)

The governor’s latest restrictions, therefore, are a gross overreaction to current conditions. His policy is going to kill our local economy, with no help coming from either the federal or state governments.

I urge our area mayors and city councils, and the County Board, to investigate thoroughly what authority the governor truly has, and what they can do to mitigate and overrule his policy. We should not sit idly by while our neighbors are run out of business and into bankruptcy because of an arbitrary, severely harmful process from Springfield.

Roger Strukhoff

DeKalb