Convention Hit

That hole in the budget keeps getting bigger:

• Before Illinoisans were working from home, before restaurants had shut down and before the stay-at-home order was in place, the coronavirus pandemic was already ravaging the state’s convention business.
  
  Now it appears the industry that sustained the pandemic’s first economic blows might be one of the last to recover.
  
  Under Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s five-phase plan to reopen the state, conventions cannot be held until the final phase of recovery. To reach that phase, a vaccine must be developed, a treatment option must be readily available or no new cases must arise over a sustained period.
  
  There’s no telling how long it might take to reach the fifth phase, and increases in cases or hospitalizations could hamper progress. As a result, organizations are unsure whether they should cancel events later this year that would bring tens of thousands of people to the Chicago area, staying in hotels, taking cabs and ride-share vehicles and using their expense accounts to dine in the best restaurants.

$923 million in immediate losses - hotel stays, food and entertainment.

Then there's the ripple effect through hospitality employees laid off, taxi rides not taken, ride-shares not shared, the list is damn near endless.

Groot is putting further restrictions in place, some even stricter that Fatass's:

• Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot said the city can’t reopen without a decrease in the number of coronavirus cases, “which we have not seen yet at all.”
  
  Though the city has seen progress in reducing the number of COVID-19 cases, Lightfoot said, challenges remain.

Remember, the democrat Machine (Groot, Prickwrinkle, Foxxx, Evans, and Putzker) is releasing actual criminals - including rapists and murderers - so that they can jail social distance violators.