Wrapping up the week, Illinois crossed two major markers: A COVID-19 testing milestone and more than 1.3 million unemployed Illinoisans.

Gov. J.B. Pritzker was in Peoria Friday touting more than 1 million COVID-19 tests conducted in Illinois since the pandemic began. Of the tests conducted, there’ve been 125,000 positive cases. Of that, most have recovered. There’ve been around 5,800 deaths attributed to the disease.

But there’s also been nearly 1.4 million unemployed mostly driven by the government-imposed shutdown Pritzker defended.

“We’re making the best decisions we can with the science and the data and I’m sure that people will six months or a year or two years from now look back and say we should should have done x, y or z’ but if they weren’t in the room with the information at that moment then I don’t think they’d have a leg to stand on,” Pritzker said.

Wirepoints founder Mark Glennon has been tracking the COVID crisis not just from the health numbers side, but the economic side. He said it’s obvious the governor didn’t take into account the negative economic impacts of his decisions.

“And the healthcare costs, lost lives in the long wrong of a ruined economy now pretty clearly exceed the risk associated with having the strictest lockdown rule in the country in place,” Glennon said.

Glennon highlighted the expected increased deaths from suicide or unchecked and untreated diseases like cancers or other ailements.

Asked what he’d do differently to prepare for the economic consequences from the pandemic and his unilateral actions shutting small businesses deemed non-essential, Pritzker said that’s a hard question to answer.

President Donald Trump Friday urged states that were closed to open back up. He highlighted a Friday report of 2 million jobs added across the country leading to a lower than anticipated national unemployment rate. The stock market Friday also made substantial gains. Trump said there’d be even greater economic growth if states that have strict restrictions in place opened things back up.

Pritzker defended his cautious approach to reopening too quickly.

“This is the history of pandemics, the states and the cities that keep their people safest are the ones that do the best economically coming out of it,” Pritzker said. “So we’re doing our best to open our economy but do it in a way that keeps everyone safe and healthy.”

UIS professor and public policy researcher Gary Reinbold, independently reviewed a variety of COVID stats. He said the governor’s lockdown on downstate Illinois led to lower positive cases per capita but a higher number of COVID deaths per capita than other states with similar demographics.

“You can’t really make a convincing argument based on this data just because the data aren’t solid enough that the restrictions didn’t work,” Reinbold said. “But I think it’s difficult to make a convincing argument that the restrictions did work.”

Illinois’ economy has been under some kind of operating restrictions pushed unilaterally by the governor since mid-March.