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  1. You must read the article before you can comment on it.
    • SEnkey2 years ago

      It is always easier to diagnose these pathologies when they are taking place on the other side. You’ve probably seen the raft of papers showing how vaccine uptake correlates with Democratic voting and COVID deaths correlate with Republican voting. Perhaps you have marveled at the spectacle of Republican elites actively harming their own audience. But the same thing Fox News hosts were doing to their elderly supporters, progressive activists were doing to their side’s young ones.

      In a big country, there are always going to be crazy people at the margins. You can measure the health of the parties by the degree to which crazy ideas are taken up by powerful people. (This, of course, is why the Republican Party handing the most powerful job in the world to a conspiracy theorist is the grimmest possible sign.) But the Democratic Party’s internal debate on school closings was making room at the table for some truly unhinged ideas. The head of the largest state’s most powerful teachers union insisted on the record “there is no such thing as learning loss” and described plans to reopen schools as “a recipe for propagating structural racism.”

      There was a time school closings made sense. No vaccine, no understanding of Covid, no answers! Then we started understanding a little more. School closings seemed the cautious thing to do, weighing the student outcomes as a trade off. As evidence mounted that kids aren't very effected by Covid (though households may be) it seemed more overly cautious. Then vaccines came...

      Then evidence came that kids are effected by closures. Emotionally, academically, even physically. The trade off no longer seemed worth it.

      At this point what is the rationale for school closures? I can see very temporary closures, meaning a week or two if there is a large number of cases with symptoms etc. I don't see massive remote learning being needed now. Get vaccinated.