Dupage Policy Journal

Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker defended his initial handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, saying that vaccines have worked despite doubts by Dr. Anthony Fauci on their effectiveness.

“One that I often think about is could we have had a mask mandate earlier, should we have, would that have saved more lives,” Pritzker said in a story by the Center Square. “As it is, we saved an awful lot of lives I think with the restrictions that were in place and people followed them importantly.”

Early in 2020, the story reported, Pritzker's administration said the risk to the public from the emerging coronavirus was low, but two weeks later, his administration ordered restaurants to close to in-person service, ordered schools closed and issued a weeks-long stay-at-home order, followed by months of disaster proclamations.

Research by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University found that vaccine mandates imposed in Chicago and other areas made virtually no difference in stopping the spread of the virus, with researchers adding “these mandates imposed severe restrictions on the lives of many citizens and business owners. Yet, we find no evidence that the mandates were effective in their intended goals of reducing COVID-19 cases and deaths.”

In addition, Dr. Anthony Fauci, who left his role as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases last year, cast doubt on the efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccines. 

"The limitations of influenza and SARS-CoV-2 vaccines remind us that candidate vaccines for most other respiratory viruses have to date been insufficiently protective for consideration of licensure," Fauci wrote in Cell Host and Microbe.