Friend --

I really try to reduce the toxicity in politics.? We have to disagree without being disagreeable.? But right now, I am so mad at Governor Pritzker that I would have difficulty keeping my temper in check when speaking with him.

This week the Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) revealed that when calculating the Region 4 (Randolph, Monroe, St. Clair, Madison, Clinton, Bond, and Washington Counties) positivity rate, they HAD NOT been including data from the BJC Healthcare network.

The BJC Network provides healthcare for 30% of the residents of the Metro East and administers thousands of COVID-19 tests.? BJC officials indicated to me that they had submitted only their POSITIVE test results to IDPH.? This means that our data wasn't simply incomplete--it was incorrect! ?

You can read initial media coverage of this development here.?

Instead of taking corrective action and reopening Region 4 immediately, this morning Governor Pritzker still maintained that his mitigation sanctions should remain in place, stating he was "rooting for the Metro East."

No, Governor, you are not. If you were rooting for us, you'd admit that your administration made an incomprehensibly stupid mistake. Own it and take corrective action immediately to allow our businesses to reopen.

If you want to help me spread the word that Governor Pritzker's positivity rate is not accurate, you can donate here.?

I will immediately roll your donation into Facebook advertising to spread the news of this travesty.

Thanks for reading and S/F,

Paul

Paul Schimpf