For the Record: My Unpublished, Solicited Chicago Tribune Op-Ed
The following is an op-ed that I wrote at the invitation of the Chicago Tribune in August 2020 that was never published. Long story short: They wanted me to introduce myself, “dumb it down,” and make it more “relatable.” I appreciated the feedback, but didn’t want to turn what I’d written into a personal essay—or compromise the content.
I changed a few words for clarity, but this submission is otherwise the same as what I sent to the Editor. Reading it in Spring 2022 makes me sad, but also makes me smile.
I’m posting it now as a record of what I thought and felt at the time.
I stand by every word.
August 27, 2020
Illinois is still in a state of emergency, experiencing an unprecedented public health disaster. At least that’s what our state and local officials keep telling us.
Suddenly, “30 days to slow the spread” has turned into five months and counting, with no end in sight, short of a vaccine. As a concerned taxpayer who has closely examined national, state, and county data, I’m compelled to shed light on what we need to know from our state and local leadership about COVID19 in Illinois.
First, we need to know how Illinois is defining and counting COVID19 deaths. In April [2020], Ngozi Ezike, Director of IDPH, said anyone who tested positive for COVID19, regardless of cause of death, is counted as a COVID death.
Last week, the St. Clair County Health Department added nine deaths to its count after IDPH told them to count the deaths of anyone counts as a COVID death anyone who dies within 30 days of testing COVID-positive. If that’s the guideline, it helps explain not only over 4,200 long-term care facility deaths in Illinois, but also 45 deaths involving falls, motor vehicle accidents, drug overdoses, poisoning, and self-harm in the Cook County Examiner’s COVID database.
The criteria or rationale for defining a COVID death should be articulated and defended to the public, especially because the Governor has used these deaths to justify policies that have had serious health and economic consequences for millions.
It’s also critical to see when the COVID-attributed deaths actually occurred. IDPH data is based on day of report, not day of actual death. The 9 deaths added to the St. Clair County total occurred in July. In Cook County, the May 23rd suicide of a 20-year-old COVID-positive woman was added to the Cook COVID deaths register last week, as was the April 2nd death of a 70-year-old man earlier this month. These can’t be dismissed as outliers or errors.
Using data obtained from the department via FOIA, I compared the state’s COVID deaths by day of death and by day of report through August 4. IDPH’s public graph shows a reported daily high of 191 deaths, while its day of death data shows 128 for a one-day high. Besides sharper, more visually alarming peaks, IDPH’s day-of-report graph has a higher 7-day moving average. This suggests either more deaths are being reported than have ended up being attributed to COVID, or old deaths are being reported with recent deaths.
There’s also the mismatch between CDC and IDPH death counts for the state. Currently, the CDC has certified 479 fewer COVID deaths in Illinois from March thru June than IDPH says there were. The difference isn’t explained by reporting lag. The number of probable deaths, which IDPH reports separately, oscillates from week to week, without explanation of the relationship to the overall death count. Are these probables being reviewed then announced as new deaths? Do these help explain some of the differences? We need to know.
What about hospitalizations? A primary reason we upended our lives in March was to ensure hospitals were not overwhelmed. They weren’t then, and they aren’t now. Every measure from Emergency Room visits for COVID-Like Illness (CLI) to ventilator use and ICU bed occupancy is down. IDPH and Chicago report some of these data in terms of COVID Patients, but what does that mean? Are Illinois’ “COVID Patients” folks who are in the hospital for other reasons, like pregnancy, who then test positive for COVID? Is it patients who visit the ER due to COVID symptoms, and then test positive and are hospitalized to be treated for the disease? We deserve to know.
Then there’s testing. From the Governor to universities, we are engaged in a “seek and ye shall find” testing strategy they are convinced is key to returning to normal. Test-without-ceasing is the handmaiden of the “percent positive” goalpost that’s being used to warn, shame, and exact mitigations on counties and industries where mask-lessness and social gatherings - but not protests - are the alleged culprits.
Yet we don’t know the contexts for testing, when all reported tests occurred, or the validity estimates for the tests being used. This week, the CDC recommended people not be tested for COVID, unless they have symptoms or a known exposure. Is the state aware of this recommendation? Will it adjust for “the science”?
The sidekick of testing is the state’s multi-million contact tracing effort. Despite the size of investment, little data from the effort has been shared.
And what is a “case”? Chicago’s dashboard says cases are “people who receive a positive test result.” Pre-COVID, “case” has always meant a person who is sick, rather than simply carrying a live virus or remnants thereof. The term has lost meaning in this epidemic because many people who test positive are asymptomatic and never become ill. “I have an asymptomatic ‘case’ of the flu,” said no one ever. Among individuals testing, how many are asymptomatic?
We don’t know.
Sadly, we do know that no population has suffered more than Illinois’ long-term care facility residents. Those deaths make up 55% of Illinois’ reported total. This month, 75% of reported COVID deaths are in those facilities.
With IDPH launching an internal investigation into employees’ alleged mishandling of abuse complaints, we need answers to other basic questions about these deaths. How many facility residents had DNRs? How does this year’s Illinois LTCF death rate compare to other years? Some studies estimate nursing home facility turnover at 25% - 35% per year. The CDC says as many as 380,000 LTCFs die annually from infections contracted in facilities. Until this spring, LTCFs in Cook County were not required to report deaths to the medical examiner. If these data exist, they should be released for analysis.
The bottom line is this: State and local leaders want us to believe Illinois is still in the midst of a public health emergency that warrants closed schools, crushed business, and curbed liberties.
It’s time citizens demand they prove it.
All Chicago-related posts:
