Our SHOOT FROM THE HIP MAYOR

 

doesn't accept that covid has become a non-factor

incompetence per se

 

Mayor Lori Lightfoot remained non-committal about lifting Chicago’s mask mandate Feb. 28 in line with the statewide mask requirement for all Illinoisans. Lightfoot said the city is "making tremendous progress" bringing down COVID-19 cases but may keep the mandate in place. 

Chicagoans could remain masked even after Illinois drops the statewide indoor mask mandate for most Illinoisans Feb. 28, Mayor Lori Lightfoot warned city residents Feb. 14.

The mayor’s tentative update comes days after Chicago and Cook County health officials announced plans to lift local mask orders for the regions’ residents in a consistent timeframe with the governor.

Gov. J.B. Pritzker said he would the lift the statewide indoor mask mandate by the end of the month if new COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths continue to decline. But Lightfoot said the metrics in Chicago remain too high to firmly commit to the governor’s anticipated timeline.

“I don’t want to put an artificial date on when this is going to happen when we still see some danger signs in the data,” Lightfoot said. “Feb. 28 is obviously the date that the state set; it’s not the date that the city set.”

The mayor said the city is “making tremendous progress” in bringing down COVID-19 cases, but noted cases remain high with health officials “still seeing too many people dying every day from COVID.”

The Chicago Department of Public Health reported 431 new daily coronavirus cases Feb. 15, down 30% from the prior week. New hospitalizations declined by half during this time while deaths fell to eight per day.

A statement from aldermen to the mayor Feb. 9 sought to lift the city mask and vaccine mandate by Feb. 11 – in time for restaurants and local businesses to take full advantage of the Superbowl crowd and Valentine’s Day weekend.

The aldermen argued Lightfoot’s pandemic policies served their purpose to combat COVID-19 at the expense of crippling small businesses and city finances.

Pointing out that case rates are about where they were when Chicago decided to host Lollapalooza last summer, they say the science advises loosening restrictions in line with the state.

“When politicians are not on the same page, it’s very frustrating to our neighborhood businesses,” Alderman Silvana Tabares said. “What I hear from residents is they’re sick and tired, and it’s not just of COVID. They want politicians across Illinois – the state of Illinois – to get on the same page.”

Still, Lightfoot remains noncommittal on lifting the mask mandate for Chicago Feb. 28.

“We’re using the same set of data and metrics that we’ve used throughout the pandemic,” Lightfoot said. “We’re making progress, but we’re not there yet.”

Those metrics include having three of four COVID-19 metrics in the “lower transmission” threshold. Those include cases diagnosed per day, seven-day rolling average for test positivity, hospital beds occupied by COVID-19 patients and ICU beds occupied by COVID-19 patients.