The Game Is The Game
Gov. Pritzker rules the state by executive order and whether it be mask mandates or quarantine directives, it's all part of a long political game
(Photo Credit: Sun-Times)
In the fabulous 2000’s HBO television show “The Wire,” the lines between heroes and villains are often blurred.
Yes, there are police – in the case of “The Wire” Baltimore police – who’s job is to catch the criminals. But on the show, identifying who the bad guys are is not always clear.
Is it the gang members? The street drug pushers? They certainly look like criminals.
Or are they the union officials, the lobbyists, law enforcement leaders or politicians, who dress and dine like aristocrats but have their hands in everybody’s pocket, most concerned with protecting their own asses?
One of the crime families depicted on “The Wire,” the Barksdale group, is captained by a character named Avon Barksdale. Avon, along with his second in command, Stringer Bell, would often say these five words when justifying or ordering criminal behavior:
“The game is the game.”
It’s perfectly appropriate to use the analogy of “The Wire” when attempting to explain where we are in the country with Covid, more specifically, in lllinois. It is a game, and like the characters on the “The Wire” television show, it’s zero sum with no winners, only losers, the greatest sufferers being school-aged children.
(Photo Credit: HBO’s The Wire)
By executive order.
That’s how Illinois has been run by Governor J.B Pritzker since the onset of the pandemic in March 2020.
And when the courts catch on to his shenanigans, he just files another EO.
Legally, the orders are not worth the paper they are printed on. Since the school year started in August, we’ve seen successful legal challenges to Pritzker’s govern-by- order methodology. But the precedent of ruling by autocratic decree is long established and the overwhelming majority of school districts accept these orders as the rule of law.
The latest EO came down late Friday.
In what could be referred to as the “Quarantine Decree,” Pritzker ordered another round of mandates, including changing ‘Quarantine’ to ‘Exclude.’
(The term ‘Exclusion’ is not new. The Illinois State Board of Education has used it in school guidance literature since the vaccine roll out.)
From Friday’s Executive Order:
“Exclude” means a School’s obligation to refuse admittance to the School premises, extracurricular events or any other events organized by the School, regardless of whether an isolation or quarantine order issued by a local health department has expired or has not been issued. Exclusion from a School shall not be considered isolation or quarantine
We can only speculate, but this appears to be in response to several downstate court cases challenging the right of school districts to order quarantines and enforce mask mandates. Last week’s highly publicized case of Joliet West High School was most egregious, with almost an entire football team wiped out due to contact quarantines.
In the EO, directives are given on the ‘Exclude’ mitigation:
Exclude any Student or School Personnel who is a Confirmed Case or Probable Case for a minimum of 10 days following onset date if symptomatic or date of test if asymptomatic, or as otherwise directed by the School’s local health authority.
Exclude any Student or School Personnel who is a Close Contact for a minimum of 14 days or as otherwise directed by the School’s local health authority, which may recommend options such as Exclusion for 10 days or 7 days with a negative test result on day 6. As an alternative to Exclusion, Schools may permit Close Contacts who are asymptomatic to be on the School premises, at extracurricular events, or any other events organized by the School if both the Confirmed Case or Probable Case and the Close Contact were masked for the entire exposure period and provided the Close Contact tests negative on days 1, 3, 5 and 7 following the exposure.
In addition to (b)(i) and(b)(ii), Schools shall Exclude any Student or School Personnel for a minimum of 10 days who exhibit symptoms of COVID-19 until they are fever free for 24 hours and until 48 hours after diarrhea or vomiting have ceased.
Compare those from the EO to that of the Illinois Department of Public Health’s quarantine guidelines:
Option 1: Quarantine at home for 14 calendar days. Date of last exposure is considered day 0.
Option 2: Quarantine for 10 calendar days after the close contact’s last exposure to the COVID-19 case. Date of last exposure is considered day 0.
The individual may end quarantine after day 10 if no symptoms of COVID-19 developed during daily monitoring.
IDPH’s well-publicized “Test To Stay” program states, “Following any indoor exposures, with the exception of household exposures, if schools test close contacts on days one, three, five, and seven from date of exposure by a PCR or rapid Emergency Use Authorization (EUA)-approved test, close contacts are permitted to remain in the classroom as long as the results are negative.”
Compare this with language from Friday’s EO:
As an alternative to Exclusion, Schools may permit Close Contacts who are asymptomatic to be on the School premises, at extracurricular events, or any other events organized by the School if both the Confirmed Case or Probable Case and the Close Contact were masked for the entire exposure period and provided the Close Contact tests negative on days 1, 3, 5 and 7 following the exposure
Basically the same directives, only the penalty for violation no longer results in ‘quarantine’ but ‘exclusion.’
What’s the difference? Nothing other than an ‘Exclusion’ hasn’t been challenged yet in court and lost. Quarantines have.
It’s how Pritzker stays one step ahead of the legal system and public sentiment. He did the same in August with the mask mandate, just weeks after saying he would cede decision-making to local jurisdictions.
Here’s what we’ve seen in August and September –– temporary restraining orders, contentious school board meetings and some negative media publicity (not nearly enough but the Joliet West situation was enough to move the needle). In the face of such defiance, the one card Pritzker plays is use the long arm of Springfield to reach out and pick everyone’s pocket.
One apparent adjustment, or dare we say concession, from Pritzker to come out of Friday’s EO is a reduced mitigation for those labeled a ‘close contact’:
I reached out to an Illinois superintendent late Monday and asked about the executive order and the close contact provision.
The superintendent said that the guidance is nothing new – three feet or more, masked, no close contact. Vaccinated excluded from quarantine unless symptomatic. That’s been an IDPH rule from the start. Unvaccinated have “Test To Stay” option as long as masked; mask optional does not include a “Test To Stay” option (although what we learned from Joliet West is how public health officials can waive the “Test To Stay” for any reason. We still don’t know why athletes were not allowed to test out of quarantine).
What’s different about the EO, according to the superintendent, is how what previously was public health “guidance” has now been repackaged as an Executive Order.
The superintendent added how their district was still working through the verbiage and would discuss at their next school board meeting.
Interpreting Pritzker’s unaccountable commandments has become a monthly agenda item at BOE meetings across the state. Student quarantines are another popular topic, more so this school year when so much emphasis is placed on in-school learning.
Here’s a look at recent quarantine numbers from a handful of Chicagoland school districts (not easy to find as most do not publish quarantine data or any relevant Covid-related data at all):
DISTRICT 214
DISTRICT 211
DISTRICT 64
Notice how District 64 uses “Exclusion” to categorize students, which according to its website are “individuals excluded from school due to isolation or quarantine.”
Looking at the data from these three districts, one of them, District 211 is minimizing the amount of quarantines. Others, like D214 and 64, are struggling to do so.
Comments from district leaders are baffling in how they believe SHIELD testing is their way out of “the pandemic.”
From the Chicago Tribune about District 64:
In August, (D64 Superintendent Eric) Olson said testing will allow for fewer students to be quarantined at home if they came into contact with someone who tested positive for the virus. According to the in-person learning plan, unvaccinated students and staff who were potentially exposed to COVID-19 can remain in school and will not have to quarantine if they continue to test negatively on days 1, 3, 5 and 7 following an exposure
How is more testing going lessen the amount of lost school days due to quarantining? If everyone is masked all day, what is the point of a daily spit test?
Pritzker and his propaganda machine have snowed district officials into his No Covid agenda, that the virus must be wiped off the face of the earth like a nuclear weapon, and not the mutating viral contagion it is and always will be.
And when resistance strikes, fire off another EO to calm the stormy political seas.
At the end of Season 3 of “The Wire,” Baltimore police finally bring enough heat to bring down the Barksdale crew. Arrests are made and the family splinters off. But the irony of the show is how nothing changes.
There may be new players, but The Game is The Game.
That’s how it is for Pritzker. He governs through orders and mandates, his version of The Game, with no counterbalance or end in sight.
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