{"id":16877,"date":"2020-04-24T12:41:14","date_gmt":"2020-04-24T18:41:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/?p=16877"},"modified":"2020-04-24T12:41:14","modified_gmt":"2020-04-24T18:41:14","slug":"yes-im-angry-about-my-elected-officials-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2020\/04\/yes-im-angry-about-my-elected-officials-today.html","title":{"rendered":"Yes, I’m angry about my elected officials today"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/p>\n

In the local news<\/a>:\u00a0 Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker has extended the stay-at-home order from its original end date of April 30, until a new date of May 31, with some small modifications:\u00a0 some state parks will reopen to hiking, fishing, and boating; some golf courses will re-open; greenhouses, garden centers, nurseries, and pet groomers will be deemed \u201cessential\u201d; some elective\/nonemergency medical procedures will now be permitted; and non-essential retailers will be permitted to take telephone\/online orders for outside pickup or delivery.\u00a0 But at the same time, a face-covering requirement has been added, and \u201cessential\u201d stores will now be required to limit the number of customers in the store at any given time.\u00a0 And even the permission for fishing and boating is very narrowly-defined:\u00a0 only two people in a boat, with no apparent exception for family members.\u00a0 Also still unclear to me at this point:\u00a0 will dental procedures be possible as a sub-type of \u201cmedical procedure\u201d?\u00a0 Will libraries be able to provide curbside pick-up as a form of \u201cretailer\u201d?<\/p>\n

(The dental procedure is of particular relevance to me because (a) Mom needs a dental procedure which is not strictly speaking an emergency but does meaningfully affect her well-being and (b) my kid has been anxious to move closer to getting his braces off.)<\/p>\n

At the same time, being outdoors, getting exercise \u2013 that\u2019s important to one\u2019s health, and being cooped up will harm one\u2019s health.\u00a0 That\u2019s clear in the long term.\u00a0 Will it affect one\u2019s susceptibility to COVID-19, or the severity of an infection?\u00a0 I don\u2019t know.\u00a0 But it does trouble me when elected officials, worried about too many people congregating in open spaces, simply shut them down entirely, as is the case now with six of the forest preserves in Cook County<\/a>.\u00a0 (For non-Chicago readers, \u201cforest preserve\u201d is the label the Chicago area gives to its large county park system; elsewhere, these are just \u201ccounty parks.\u201d\u00a0 They have walking\/biking paths, picnic groves, sledding hills, and the like rather than merely being, as their name implies, sites to preserve forests.\u00a0 It\u2019s a bit like \u201ccurrency exchanges,\u201d which it took me a while to figure out are the label the Chicago area gives to the businesses which provide check-cashing, money orders, utility payments, and other banking services, rather than actually exchanging currency.)<\/p>\n

The way this is expressed on twitter is that this is a variation of \u201cthe beatings will continue until morale improves,\u201d and I know that\u2019s not quite the right analogy, but it sure as heck seems counter-productive.<\/p>\n

I continue to be somewhere in the middle \u2014 knowing that we simply can\u2019t resume business as usual, but that it is reasonable and appropriate to worry about the economic consequences of these actions, and know that somewhere along the way, this has to be factored in.\u00a0 In particular, with respect to the new Illinois order, it has me very frustrated that the governor extended the order for a whole further month, rather than a smaller length of time, with the possibility of yet further extensions.\u00a0 And when I say \u201cfrustrated\u201d I mean not that I\u2019m about to start waving my Gadsen flag at the state capitol, but that it has really affected me today.<\/p>\n

And again, this is not about sacrificing granny so my family can go to a baseball game.\u00a0 I find myself asking, \u201chow did the disputes about re-opening become partisan?\u201d \u2014 that is, rather than opinions on the extremity of the shut-down being spread across partisan lines.\u00a0 And part of it seems to be a matter of red\/rural areas more impacted by the shut downs even with few or no COVID cases.\u00a0 \u00a0But I presume that a part of it is also a greater degree of confidence by \u201cblue\u201d folk that the government has the ability to meet Americans\u2019 basic needs by turning on the money spigot for as long as it lasts, and by restarting the economy afterwards.\u00a0 But I worry \u2014 a lot \u2014 that this confidence is woefully misplaced, that it simply is not possible for central planners to adequately define what is and isn\u2019t an \u201cessential\u201d and that we\u2019ll find that a lot of things classified as unneeded will prove, in their absence, to have serious consequences, in a \u201cfor want of a nail<\/a>\u201d sort of way.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s one small example:\u00a0 \u201chow many Americans will die because cancer screenings aren\u2019t happening?\u201d\u00a0 That\u2019s the title of an article at The Federalist<\/a>.\u00a0 But there are so many effects that go beyond simply the loss of any one job.\u00a0 (And yes, regarding unemployment, I\u2019m now seeing increasing numbers of reports that employers can\u2019t rehire employees, PPP loans in hand, because those workers refuse to return to work, due to the $600\/week extra unemployment benefit.)<\/p>\n

Is this a \u201cRepublican\u201d reaction?\u00a0 Am I bad?\u00a0 Do I want granny to die?\u00a0 No.\u00a0 But neither do I have any confidence that our elected officials \u2014 yes, including Trump, but also locally \u2014 are making sound decisions.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Image:\u00a0https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File%3AJ.B._Pritzker_speaks_to_the_Evanston_chapter_of_Action_for_a_Better_Tomorrow_IMG_2370_(cropped2).jpg; By SecretName101 (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons.\u00a0 Yes, there are probably better Public Domain pics of Prizker now that he\u2019s governor; oh, well.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the local news:\u00a0 Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker has extended the stay-at-home order from its original end date of April 30, until a new date of May 31, with some small modifications:\u00a0 some state parks will reopen to hiking, fishing, and boating; some golf courses will re-open; greenhouses, garden centers, nurseries, and pet groomers will […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1421,828],"class_list":["post-16877","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-covid-19","tag-j-b-pritzker"],"yoast_head":"\nYes, I'm angry about my elected officials today<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In the local news:\u00a0 Illinois Gov. J.B. 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