Closing schools and instituting mask mandates on children was never necessary. Sweden didn't take those steps and they came out fine.
Many countries closed schools during the pandemic to contain the spread of SARS-CoV-2. Sweden closed upper-secondary schools, while lower-secondary schools remained open, allowing for an evaluation of school closures. This study analyzes the impact of school closures on the spread of SARS-CoV-2 by comparing groups exposed and not exposed to open schools. We find that exposure to open schools resulted in a small increase in infections among parents. Among teachers, the infection rate doubled, and infections spilled over to their partners. This suggests that keeping lower-secondary schools open had a minor impact on the overall spread of SARS-CoV-2 in society. However, teachers are affected, and measures to protect them could be considered.
The point that needs to be made is that no matter how immune children are, when teachers are dropping dead or even just getting sick at a high rate without the ability to find replacements, it's difficult to operate a school normally, no matter how much everyone wants to.
>>This suggests that keeping lower-secondary schools open had a minor impact on the overall spread of SARS-CoV-2 in society.
But you're disagreeing with that conclusion, and suggesting that the increase in COVID deaths amongst teachers, from a very small number, to a higher, but still very small number, would have caused more social harm than the harm of shutting down in-person schooling, which we know has been enormous:
"30-40 percent of minority and low-income students weren’t learning during lockdowns"
https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/coronavirus-leadi...
First, lower school students, or as we would call them middle school students, have a much lower rate of spread compared to 18 year olds in high school. The age brackets here are a little off, but it shows the effect [0].
But more importantly, what I've said in several posts now is that you are presenting a false dichotomy, which another poster points out you in your fentanyl argument as well. The choice was not "close schools" or "keep schools open". The choice was "How do we teach and keep everyone safe". Keeping schools open in various parts of the country and failing to implement proper safety measures resulted in tragic losses of brilliant young teachers who didn't have to die. Your feelings about the magnitude of the Sweden results notwithstanding, they still show increased risk for teachers; the case of Georgia where dozens of young teachers and school staff have died in such a short time, leading to shortages and closures out of necessity rather than caution, shows how COVID can easily disrupt the entire school system, despite students not transmitting the virus.
> "30-40 percent of minority and low-income students weren’t learning during lockdowns"
A lot of that has to do with the inequitable distribution of resources and access to things like wifi, computers, and quiet spaces for study. We have been advocating for funding for these things for a long time, for precisely this reason. The factors that cause minorities and low income students to have trouble learning during the pandemic are the very same reasons they struggle during normal times. Remember school lunch debt is a thing. Do you think hungry students learn well in the classroom?
It's really quite astounding to me that some of the loudest voices decrying school closures during lockdowns will be the ones standing in the way of increased support of the kind that would alleviate these inequities.
>>Keeping schools open in various parts of the country and failing to implement proper safety measures resulted in tragic losses of brilliant young teachers who didn't have to die.
This is entirely speculation, while you demand extreme rigor from me when I suggest a causative link behind the surge in drug overdose deaths in 2020 and the lockdown policies that massively exacerbated social isolation.
>>A lot of that has to do with the inequitable distribution of resources and access to things like wifi, computers, and quiet spaces for study. We have been advocating for funding for these things for a long time, for precisely this reason.
So you are admitting that teacher's unions knew that this would happen in the event of school closures. The teacher's unions' behavior was completely inexcusable and they were clearly not advocating for children.
Not in my experience, no. We've asked for all measures of all kinds, and have been met with blanket "no's" in many places.
> This is entirely speculation, while you demand extreme rigor from me when I suggest a causative link behind the surge in drug overdose deaths in 2020 and the lockdown policies that massively exacerbated social isolation.
I had specific people in mind when I wrote that sentence. And I'm not demanding extreme rigor, I just want to see the causative link. Still yet to see it.
> The teacher's unions' behavior was completely inexcusable and they were clearly not advocating for children.
First of all, the initial round of school closings was not at the behest of teacher's unions, it was an almost coordinated movement across the entire country and in many industries. Very hard to put school closings at the feet of teachers unions. Secondly, teachers unions advocate for teachers, not children. Children have their own advocates in teachers themselves, who in fact advocated the strongest for children during this time. Very strange this effort to paint teachers as somehow anti-children when they literally devote their lives to kids at great personal cost to themselves.
I find that extremely hard to believe, as pressure from teachers unions successfully kept schools closed for over a year in many jurisdictions. The political cost to political leaders, and welfare costs to society, of simply accepting some demand for more safety measures in schools would have been far lower than keeping schools closed altogether, yet the latter is what happened.
>>I had specific people in mind when I wrote that sentence.
What do you mean? You made an allegation of a causative link, with no evidence provided beyond an anecdotal correlation.