South Cook News

Republican state Rep. Chris Miller is warning what he thinks Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s new vaccine passport system could mean for all of Illinois.

“Absolutely, all of this makes life harder for families and businesses,” Miller told the SE Illinois News, adding he thinks the state’s continued flood of mandates could add to the record-high number of people that made the decision to leave Illinois altogether in 2021.  

The new passport system requires businesses to check proof of vaccination as part of a plan aimed at slowing the number of COVID-related hospitalizations and deaths, CBS Chicago reported.

Miller essentially views it as a waste of time.

“This is a virus, and the only way to get through it is to get herd immunity,” he said. “All these other things will not make a difference, especially when anything that doesn’t fit their narrative of fear they won’t to listen to. I say people need to go back out and live their lives.”

With the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention establishing that anyone, regardless of vaccination status, can likely spread the omicron variant of the coronavirus to other people and the variant likely will spread more easily than the original SARS-CoV-2 virus, Miller said he can still see why so many are still opposed to mandates.

“The reality is vaccinated people can spread the virus,” he said.

No matter what, Miller said he has every intention of continuing to support businesses that choose not to enforce the mandate.

“I absolutely will support our small business owners in their fight for survival,” he said.

“We are penalizing our small businesses for a problem situation they had no part in creating,” he said. “All these mandates have just made it harder for them to do business and provide for their families.”

Wirepoints President Ted Dabrowski recently told WXAN radio he senses a direct correlation between all the mandates and the state’s record-breaking population loses over the last 12 months. Dabrowski added the measure of population loss is meaningful because it captures all of the factors affecting the quality of life in Illinois: taxes, pandemic mandates, crime rates, finances and family values.

Since the pandemic hit, the Chicago Tribune recently placed the number of businesses that have been forced to close at 4,400, including 2,400 that say they won’t reopen. With all the data coming from crowd-sourced business review platform Yelp, researchers added across the country more than 132,500 businesses have permanently or temporarily closed since March, with Chicago being home to the fourth-highest number of closures, behind only Los Angeles, New York City and San Francisco.