OK, Kids: Back To School

Last Spring, I asked you: What’s Wrong With This Logic?

Basically, that we should make every effort to protect Covid-vulnerable people while allowing young-ish people without serious health issues — kids, especially — to go on with their lives.

Yes, I agreed: kids who can’t avoid close contact with vulnerable adults need to be kept home.  But we shouldn’t pretend we’re doing that for their safety, or that it won’t hurt them.  It will hurt them, but we’re doing it to protect ourselves.

I repeated the theme again and again, but let’s face it, it’s been a scary time.  And in scary times, logic and balance and nuance and trade-offs can go out the window.  You have people like Andrew Cuomo saying that if shutting down New York saves “a single life” it will have been worth it.  That is, of course, absurd — because shutting down New York will cost other lives — but it sounds good and moral, is simple and easy to applaud.

Anyway, here we are.  Not only are vaccines on the way, the case for opening the schools is gaining strength.

“Open the schools,” urges Dr. Fauci. “If you look at the data the spread among children and from children is not really big at all.”

I wish he had said that, and louder, in August . . . but even so.

Liberal, wonderful Nick Kristof in the liberal, wonderful New York Times: When Trump Was Right and Many Democrats Wrong.  “Some things are true even though President Trump says them.  Trump has been demanding for months that schools reopen, and on that he seems to have been largely right.”  Read Nick’s whole argument, if you disagree.

Schools Don’t Spread Covid. Teachers’ Unions Don’t Care, writes Joe Nocera.  “Their insistence that classrooms be shut down during the pandemic contrary to the science punishes the kids they are supposed to care about.”

It hurts kids to keep the schools closed.

Remote School is Leaving Children Sad and Angry reports the Washington Post.

Three Feet of Social Distancing Should Be Enough in Schools, argue these professors.  “The six-feet requirement is keeping kids out of school. We need more reasonable guidelines.”

With cases and hospitalizations and death tolls soaring, it’s very hard to think logically about any of this.  But we owe it to the kids to do so.

One other thing we should never forget: NONE OF THIS HAD TO HAPPEN.  Hundreds of thousands of lives could have been spared if Trump had not eviscerated the CDC “forward” team in China; gutted Obama’s pandemic preparedness systems; ignored more than a dozen urgent warnings.  Including Joe Biden’s January 27th in USA Today.