Trust the people to follow safety measures

Gov. Pritzker and Mayor Lightfoot need to trust people. This is not a political issue; we need balance and trust that businesses and citizens can reopen slowly and safely, keeping restaurants closed until the end of June is ludicrous.

The goal of the stay-at-home orders were to alleviate the strain on our health care system. We have done that. The other stated goal was to protect the vulnerable, Gov. Pritzker, Mayor Lightfoot and the IDPH have not done that.

Nearly half of all Illinois deaths are in senior care facilities and we hear Dr. Ezike last week talk about weekly webinars for senior facilities and Gov. Pritzker talk about how these are private companies, so he's limited in what can be done.

Not to mention the true costs of this shutdown are not considered, the number of lives lost and destroyed from the myriad physical and mental calamities that will result from this economic depression will be great, make no mistake.

The longer the shutdown lasts, the greater those costs are. Open up the economy and the people will keep themselves safe and protect the vulnerable in their own families, we don't require government to do that for us.

We say we follow science, yet, we institute things like temperature checks and mandatory face mask requirements, neither of which science definitively agrees works.

And we hear we cannot fully reopen until a vaccine happens or COVID is eradicated, neither of which is a guarantee and we can't all be ordered to stay locked up for that long.

So, I ask the governor and mayor to trust business and people, let them start to reopen and focus government efforts on where nearly half of the COVID deaths are, senior care facilities. Protect the vulnerable.

John Jaszka

Carol Stream,