Wirepoints conducts research and offers commentary about Illinois’ economy and government. Wirepoints is focused on Illinois problems and crises.
“Our government officials are not telling what’s happening with pensions, property taxes and certainly with COVID,” said Wirepoints President Ted Dabrowski.
Dabrowski’s knowledge of finance, policy and government stems from his 16-year international career in finance and management. As the Head of Corporate Banking and a management member of Citibank in Poland, he advised the government on financial restructurings that continued the liberalization of the nation’s economy.
“I know that we have a big increase in cases now. But is it relatively healthy people that will be okay eventually? Or is it people that are there 70s and 80s that are co-morbid and likely to die. There’s a lot of information that the public needs in order to start operating normally. We’re a year and a half into this, we’ve got to start getting back to some normalcy. The way they present the data, doesn’t allow us to really understand and trust them,” said Dabrowski.
Dabrowski said 92% of people 65 is and older are vaccinated with at least one shot.
“So they’re well on their way to protect themselves, that’s assuming that the vaccine works… according to what they tell us. We’ve got nearly 75% of those 18 and older, who were vaccinated with at least one shot,” said Dabrowski. “So the people who are most likely to die and have serious illness are being protected, which now leaves the unvaccinated. Who, by now we’re making a choice not to be vaccinated. and at least for the kids who can’t be vaccinated. We’re in a situation where we should be able to, at a local level, start making some decisions and not have as many mandates from the government.”
Dabrowski said the Illinois legislature could be back in session and school boards could be making their own decisions about masking mandates based on local COVID conditions and what the public wants.
“Dr. Ngozi Ezike presented data for Illinois, that was meant to be scary. She said the number of kids that have cases have tripled, and this is like from zero to 10 years old. She said they tripled and in percentage terms, they have tripled from 5% to 15%. But when you look at the number of cases we have now, compared to the number of cases we had, when she compared in January… it is fewer cases. That’s the kind of games we don’t like to see played,” said Dabrowski.
Dabrowski said COVID is here to stay.
“We’re not going to be able to stop it. It’s going to get through the public all the time and maybe a yearly thing where, where we have cycles. We’ll have to learn to live with,” said Dabrowski. ” We’ve had 10 deaths under the age of 17 in Illinois, and most of those kids had had some serious health issues.”
Dabrowski said it’s more risky to send your kids out on his bicycle or to the lake than it is to fear COVID.
In McLean County there has been zero deaths under the age of 17. Florida has 15 detahs under the age of 17.
What is the motivation to keep masking kids?
“I’ve been looking at the Florida data, but I don’t see and increase child-deaths,” said Dabrowski. “The Chicago Teacher’s union is now threatening to close schools again, they want some metrics to say, ‘Hey, we will go remote. If we don’t like what we see.’ We need good data and we need transparency.”
Dabrowski said the State is starting to move towards mandates of vaccinating people who aren’t effected by the virus… to protect others who can vaccinate themselves.
“It’s really backwards,” said Dabrowski.
Dabrowski said there is research that proves masks to be harmful.
“We’re hiding all those facial expression and cues from kids. That’s gotta be a killer for the young kids,” said Dabrowski. ” It’s not that easy to say, ‘just wear them,’ especially when you’re talking about kids in a classroom setting for eight hours.”
Some schools are pushing back against Governor JB Pritzker’s mask mandate.
The executive order says all students in both public and private schools are required to wear masks, and there could be consequences for districts who say they won’t be following that.
“If school districts start to thumb their nose at the Governor change the mask mandate… what will the Governor do? If enough school districts said, ‘Hey, this is our local control. We’re looking at our local community. We’re looking at the amount of vaccinations we have in our community. We’re looking at how many teachers are vaccinated. We’re looking at our risk mitigation from the school, and we feel good enough to have to manage it in a different way.’ I’d be curious to know what the government does,” said Dabrowski.
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