Lake County Gazette

State Rep. Chris Bos (R-Lake Zurich) said Gov. J.B. Pritzker has only made a bad situation worse with his COVID-19 restrictions. 

“No one could have anticipated the beginning of the pandemic, however we can take a look back at similar states and see all the lockdowns, mandates and restrictions have done nothing to improve numbers, all they’ve done is hurt the business community,” Bos told the Lake County Gazette. “By taking away local control and power he’s ruining communities everywhere.”

A new Brownstone Institute study gave Pritzker’s mitigations an F and called them a “complete fail.” The study evaluated data from every state from March 2020 through April 2021.

The study said “there’s a special place for governors that locked kids out of classrooms for a year and a half, ordered sick COVID-19 patients back into nursing homes, did not practice their own orders, shut down tens of thousands of businesses and still couldn’t beat the U.S. average in COVID-19 deaths or excess all-cause deaths.”

Bos said it says a lot about Pritzker’s leadership that even his wife and daughter have elected to spend part of the pandemic in Florida. 

“If I was in his position, I would definitely have my family acting according to information I have and I would do all I could to keep them healthy,” he said. “The fact his family isn’t abiding by the same rules he has for everyone else makes me wonder.”

Back in November, Pritzker said critics of his mitigations were so rough on his family, his wife and daughter spent the Thanksgiving holiday in Florida. More recently, the Prairie State Wire reported daughter Theodora “Teddi” Pritzker spent New Year’s Eve in the Bahamas in a nightclub environment without a mask after her father urged residents to stay at home.

“It’s just more hypocrisy,” Bos said. “It’s what the Democrats typically engage in. If doing mitigations is the best thing possible, why aren’t those implementing the mitigations following them?”

Bos said it strikes him as being about power, especially when he said there’s still debate about how effective masks are having in slowing the spread of the virus.

“There are no differences in the spread rates,” he said. “Let families decide what’s best for their families. We’re absolutely seeing all the negative impact from all this with things like suicide rates being up.”

Bos said he wonders how many residents are better off under Pritzker’s leadership.  

“The longer this has gone on the more the abuse has grown and the more people have suffered,” he said.