I got the feedback today that my views on schools were too confident

I will die on this hill; hold to me to it

School closure will be the absolute worst public policy decision for the generation to come

The most discriminatory, net neg & cruel

It will be found to have made nearly no dent in the spread of the virus

The risks to teachers and staff will be found to be modest & modifiable

But the damage to kids and the very institution of public schools will be cataclysmic
The stories of undetected child abuse will be so powerful that every person who thinks it is reasonable to close schools, in this irrational way we have done in the US, will change their tune overnight
The damage to upward mobility will fall along class and racial lines, and this country will be more feudal
The fate of the nation itself-- democracy and those who participate in it-- will be made vulnerable.
And the teachers unions will be held responsible for their irrational demands and stonewalling, and I am not sure they will survive the public reckoning

I am confident in these predictions. Screenshot it.
I will be more specific. There will be just a single 60 minutes episode where just 4 kids describe the abuse they were subjected too, while trapped with the abuser, and public schools refused to open, in a place with low covid positivity, & every American's blood will boil over
I am willing to bet one kid will say
"no one came to help me"

and the show will talk about how the case positivity rate was low, and quote some repentent person, and the public sentiment will shift overnight
Someone will say "it made no sense to close these schools" "If we had opened them, this might not have happened"

And it will be like the Iraq war.
Many will be on the wrong side of history.
You only support closed schools
You only think it is reasonable
Because of availability bias
When that is broken, your spirit will break

More from Education

Chicago Public Schools are supposed to open for some special needs and pre-K students Monday

The Chicago Teachers Union is now threatening to refuse to return to work in person.

https://t.co/MgDgNe6REj


Meanwhile
https://t.co/FIij8J3r7z

Dr. Fauci: "The default position should be to try as best as possible within reason to keep the children in school or to get them back to school [...] if you look at the data the spread among children and from children is not really big at


UNICEF: "Data from 191 countries shows no consistent link between reopening schools and increased rates of coronavirus
Time for some thoughts on schools given the revised SickKids document and the fact that ON decided to leave most schools closed. ON is not the only jurisdiction to do so, but important to note that many jurisdictions would not have done so -even with higher incidence rates.


As outlined in the tweet by @NishaOttawa yesterday, the situation is complex, and not a simple right or wrong https://t.co/DO0v3j9wzr. And no one needs to list all the potential risks and downsides of prolonged school closures.


On the other hand: while school closures do not directly protect our most vulnerable in long-term care at all, one cannot deny that any factor potentially increasing community transmission may have an indirect effect on the risk to these institutions, and on healthcare.

The question is: to what extend do schools contribute to transmission, and how to balance this against the risk of prolonged school closures. The leaked data from yesterday shows a mixed picture -schools are neither unicorns (ie COVID free) nor infernos.

Assuming this data is largely correct -while waiting for an official publication of the data, it shows first and foremost the known high case numbers at Thorncliff, while other schools had been doing very well -are safe- reiterating the impact of socioeconomics on the COVID risk.

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