North Egypt News

Conservative activist Karen Tucker sees it all as such a waste.

“I noticed just the other day another restaurant in the neighborhood closed for good and there are more shutting down every day,” Tucker told the North Egypt News. “It’s a shame because all of this is happening when we know less than 2% of COVID cases have been tracked back to restaurants as the starting point. Those establishments don’t tend to be spreading zones, but that hasn’t stopped Gov. (J.B.) Pritzker from literally destroying that industry.”

Tucker bases her latest outrage on a new survey by the small business referral network Alignable that details that over the last month, 56% of all the state’s bar and restaurant owners were unable to pay their full rent as the sting of some of the governor’s ban on indoor dining took greater effect.

Nationally, that figure stands at 61%, up 19% from a month earlier with the harshest part of the winter season still yet to come. In Illinois, the number of restaurants now unable to make full rent payments has more than doubled since September.

“The problem in Illinois is with the weather, you can only deal with a restaurant that only has outside dining for so long,” Tucker added. “It’s clear the governor doesn’t know what he’s doing because most small restaurants are running on thin margins to begin with. He’s killing them with all the restrictions.”

Tucker said it’s not surprising that many restaurants owners see closing up shop until after the pandemic subsides as giving them their best chance at survival.

“So many people are just desperate, to the point of doing just about anything they can think of to save their business,” she said. “And the governor just doesn’t seem to care. At the end of the day, this is a virus, meaning they’re going to be peaks and valleys when it comes to the way it spreads. You can’t shut the world down because of something like this.”