Thread by @BauerJournalism

Gov. JB Pritzker has his daily coronavirus update at 2:30 p.m. I'll live tweet.

Follow for updates and let me know if you have questions: blockclubchicago.org/2020/12/01/cor…

Pritzker: Just as has been the case throughout this pandemic, the new COVID-19 diagnoses of today were a result of actions people took days, even a week or more, ago. The new COVID hospitalizations of today were people who were ...

first exposed 1 or 2 or sometimes even 3 weeks ago. People who died might have been fighting in the hospital for days, weeks or longer. "All that is to stay is we know we aren't going to see the bulk of the impact from Thanksgiving in our data quite yet."

Pritzker: "As expected, we saw peak demand here in Illinois running up to Thanksgiving, followed up by a significant dropoff. As you could imagine, that leads to more uncertainty in the trends that we're seeing in this in-between period. Today's uptick in our positivity rate ...

"could be from exposures beginning perhaps 2 weeks ago and including exposures that may have occurred at Thanksgiving, or it could be attributed to these fluctuations in testing. Yet another reason that we need to give ourselves time to monitor changes as behaviors begin to ...

"normalize again. ... What I am certain of is this virus is circulating widely in every county in the state of Illinois."

Pritzker: "This is the time to be extra careful. With a surge of the virus expected, limit your mobility outside of your home and stay home if you don't feel well."

If you feel well, avoid leaving home for anything but work, school, essential tasks like grocery shopping, etc.

Pritzker: "COVID-19 has stolen so many lives that weren't ready to be taken."

Shanna Sigers is talking about the death of her husband, Otis, from COVID-19. "On March 30, they told us that they had to intubate him. And his oxygen level was dropping lower and lower. Otis never recovered. And on April 25, Otis passed away."

Sigers: "Since that time, every day has been a challenge."

Sigers: "Stay at home as much as possible. Wear your mask. Wash your hands. And, please, try not to hang with people that you don't know — in fact, don't hang with people that you don't know."

Dr. Ngozi Ezike, head of the Illinois Department of Public Health: "Some of the questions I frequently get are, 'What's causing these cases to increase?' or 'What can prevent hospitals and health care workers from being overwhelmed?' ... Our human behavior. We're seeing cases ...

"increase because, although so many people are wearing masks and being compliant, there's still many who aren't. So many people made difficult choices to forego Thanksgiving in a traditional way... in the hopes of preventing an ICU Christmas, but many did not. Many people are ...

"staying home as much as possible, but others are not. And these actions of moving about and mixing of households do allow the virus to spread more quickly, which means there's more opportunity for more cases."

Ezike: "And as this holiday season continues, I ask you what you are going to do. ... You can give the gift of life by taking on some of these simple measures that are not so burdensome."

Ezike: We still have to wear masks (over mouth and nose every time). We still have to maintain 6 feet of distance. etc.

"We've been battling this pandemic together since January, and we will continue the fight. But it will take all of us. We can't go to every house to see if ...

"people have invited others over ..., we can't check every business to see if everyone is complying with wearing their mask over both their nose and mouth. But if you choose to indoors [rather than carryout], you're not helping the situation. ... Let's do everything we can ...

"because lives are actually at stake. And even if you're not going to get ill — which I don't know how anyone can know with certainty — we want to protect those who are vulnerable and who need our support ... ."

Pritzker: "I want to urge the Congress to step up and include" in a potential new stimulus support to restaurants/bars and employees who have lost their jobs.

Pritzker: "If we want to rescue millions of jobs and entrepreneurs and help them get through the next 6 months as we go about distributing the vaccines, the Congress must include the Restaurants Act in the stimulus package."

Pritzker: Try to give back to your community this Giving Tuesday. "Many more Illinoisans are in need this year, and, honestly, even a small act of kindness can save a family."

Pritzker: They anticipate the first vaccine shipment for Illinois will be small enough it might not cover all health care workers. If it does, next to get it would be long-term care facilities.

Pritzker: "Right now, it looks like — and this is as of today, and tomorrow it could change — ... 109,000 doses, which is about 54,500 people because there are two doses per person. So that's the very first shipment."

Pritzker: "We're at the whim of the FDA, the CDC and the federal government as far as those first few shipments."

Pritzker: "These vaccines that are coming in December and in January have not been approved for children. They're only approved for adults. There are trials going on, that will go on over the next couple of months with regard to children and the impact of these ... vaccines on...

"children, the dosage that's right for them and so on."

Pritzker on Chicago not anticipating vaccination mandate: "There aren't any mandates in place. It's certainly something that, as you know, is always under discussion."

Pritzker: "We will look at what the history of vaccinations has been and where, what populations you might require vaccination within and evaluate that in the context of these new vaccinations that are coming ... ."

Ezike: "Of course, everyone has heard about health care workers being at the front of the line. There are so many people that high priority."

Ezike: "We don't get to the end point until almost everyone is vaccinated. ... Everyone needs to get vaccinated ... ."

Ezike: "We absolutely will look at areas, regions that have had a large number of deaths per capita. We already know that African Americans are most likely to die ... . Weighing all that in, of course there's never gonna be a perfect equation to make that perfect; I don't ...

"think there is a right answer. But we are very intentional in looking at all of these issues. ... We're gonna have months of trying to get this vaccine out, and we'll continue to adjust."

Ezike: "I don't know who decides what 'close' is. ... That's all relative. But I think given how many months we've been at this, and now we're I think at the 10th month, I think thinking we are at the point that we talked about from month 1 that we hoped to have a vaccine and ...

"thinking we are in the month where we might actually have that vaccine, that should be seen as a significant milestone getting us to the end."

Ezike: While we're getting people vaccinated, we can control the virus by wearing masks, etc.

Pritzker: A lot more people got tested over the past 24 hours than did over the weekend. "That huge upsurge that you're talking about, going from about 6,700, I recall, on Sunday to the number from Monday that were reported, 12,000 and some, that I think you can say there's ...

"probably a mixture there of doing a lot more testing to uncover cases and people coming back and maybe having some symptoms."

Pritzker: "What I believe we are following here is it takes really 1-2 incubation periods to really understand what the effect of a holiday is or the effect of some event is. So if you count the number of days, that could be 28 days at the outside from Thanksgiving. ...

"We'll see. We will begin to see the effect here five to seven to 10 days from Thanksgiving, and that's coming up just in the next few days. We will start to see whether there's an effect from Thanksgiving and whether that effect, if there is an uptick, continues on an upward ...

"trend ... ." Local and federal experts have told him that's when we can expect to see a surge if there is one.

Pritzker: "We have two reports that have been issued, one that came from IDPH, one that came from the Department of Veterans Affairs together with the federal VA. We've also instigated and initiated the DHS inspector general to do an independent investigation so that we can ...

"learn all the details and make any corrections and hold people accountable if that's what is necessary here."

Pritzker: "I don't want to cut services. I want to cut the cost of government ... ."

Pritzker: "Yes, I am encouraging people who work in offices to do everything they can to work from home. Not everybody who works in an office can work from home. In the job of governor, I do have things I need to accomplish that require me to be either in the office or use the...

"facilities of the government that I can't access at home. ... I did stay home last week when I could. There are days when I can't."

Pritzker: "Those folks who aren't wearing masks are really putting others in danger."

Pritzker: If you're not wearing a mask and people around you aren't, "that is really a recipe for disaster."

Pritzker: "I just want to remind everybody that the laws of the state of Illinois get enforced by the local police departments, by local authorities ... ."

Pritzker: "If local law enforcement is not enforcing it, they are endangering the people who live in their jurisdictions."

Press conference over.