IL Ranks No. 47 In Vaccine Percentage, Pritzker No. 1 In Excuses

CHICAGO — President Joe Biden presents a minor problem for Gov. J.B. Pritzker.

See, pointing a finger at the federal government for everything from the state's failure to stockpile personal protective gear to the alarmingly inadequate distribution of coronavirus vaccine has been the governor's go-to move since COVID-19 landed in Illinois.

Now, there's nobody in the White House politically convenient to blame for his administration's continued bungling of the coronavirus crisis.

Last week, Pritzker's early bragging about the efficiency of getting coronavirus vaccines in the arms of Illinoisans showed itself to be a pile of untruths.

Without former President Donald Trump to kick around, Pritzker heaped blame for the slow rollout of COVID-19 inoculations on a pair of national pharmacies the former administration tasked with getting nursing home residents and elderly folks across Illinois vaccinated.

It almost worked until, remarkably, the pharmacies pushed back on Pritzker's claim that they have moved "exceedingly slow" in administering vaccines the feds cherry-picked from the state's allotment and allowed it to sit on a shelf.

NPR Illinois reporter Hannah Meisel first reported that CVS representatives said Pritzker's administration chose not to activate the pharmacy vaccination programs in half of the state's nursing homes until Monday.

Pritzker's spokeswoman claimed in a statement to Patch that there was nothing preventing pharmacies from moving more quickly than the state had scheduled, "they just weren't ready to do so."

Funny thing is, for some reason — probably a competent public health department led by epidemiologists — there wasn't a delayed start date in Chicago, which is responsible for managing its vaccine allotment separately from the state.

Look around the country, and you'll find governors in some of the most populous states who became frustrated that pharmacy vaccine distribution in nursing homes wasn't going fast enough, and didn't just decry the shortcomings of a system devised by an ousted president.

They took action. For instance, the governors of Florida and New York, respectively, hired contractors and sent in state staff to supplement efforts to vaccinate folks in long-term care facilities.

Pritzker, well, he deflected blame and responsibility, as usual.

And history tells us that he'll probably wait a news cycle or two, then tout the significance of meaningless statistics to make it appear that he is the target of unfair criticism.

That's what he did last month, grabbing a cheap headline before Christmas by claiming that Illinois has administered more vaccine doses than any state.

After the holiday, when the numbers didn't jibe with national databases tracking vaccine rollout, the governor had an excuse. He claimed a lag in processing data was to blame, as if that wasn't true when national statistics allegedly showed Illinois had "sprinted" ahead of bigger states in injecting COVID-19 shots.

Well, here we are again.

On Wednesday, Pritzker congratulated his administration for the highest tally of inoculations in a single day, while Illinois remained ranked at the bottom of the heap of states for its percentage of citizens at least partially vaccinated.

As of Thursday, Illinois ranked 47th among states nationally in getting the first of two shots of vaccine into the arms of residents, according to the New York Times vaccine rollout tracker. Only 5 percent of state residents have received shots, and 50 percent of vaccine doses distributed by the federal government remain on shelves.

The New York Times ranking inspired Republican state senators to call on the governor to "provide a clear explanation ... as to why Illinois is among the worst states in regard to getting vaccines out to those who need it most."

"Illinois is way down at the bottom of the list, and all the governor wants to do is point the finger," state senate Minority Leader Dan McConchie said.

"The other day he said ... the feds have tied our hands. Well, the feds didn't create a unique set of rules for just Illinois. All of the states have the same directives. If these other states have figured it out, why haven't we figured it out?"

Seems to me, the answer is simple.

The vaccination statistics are indicative of what Illinoisans who are paying attention have learned during the coronavirus crisis: Pritzker's pandemic policy doesn't live up to its hype.

You want examples?

OK. Here are a few: Pritzker promised "Massachusetts Model" contact tracing that never materialized.

His "science"-based metrics for social distance lockdowns — hospital capacity and benchmarks for percent positivity — suddenly became adjustable when a January jobs report showed unemployment had spiked 1 percentage point.

In April, the governor said he would immediately boost testing in Black neighborhoods. That didn't happen either.

Pritzker promises "transparency" while keeping the advice he gets from hand-picked experts secret.

Remember when the governor said that his decision to allow people at least 65 years old to get vaccinated sooner than recommended was a matter of racial equity? Well, his public health department still hasn't made public demographics to show racial breakdowns of who has received vaccines.

Since March, Pritzker has gone it alone on pandemic policy, with unchecked authority.

The result: Illinois contained the spread of COVID-19 about as well as states that didn't enact as severe, economy-crushing, social distance lockdowns.

And now, when it comes to dolling out vaccination shots, big states including New York, California, Texas and Florida all have done a better a job than Illinois figuring out how to overcome challenges to get coronavirus vaccines in people who need them most.

The only guy to blame, well, he's ranked No. 1 in excuses.

Mark Konkol, recipient of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for local reporting, wrote and produced the Peabody Award-winning series, "Time: The Kalief Browder Story." He was a producer, writer and narrator for the "Chicagoland" docu-series on CNN, and a consulting producer on the Showtime documentary, "16 Shots."

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