In the UK we closed schools, universities and workplaces during lockdowns while keeping heathrow airport open - the busiest in the country. Business travel was

In the UK we closed schools, universities and workplaces during lockdowns while keeping heathrow airport open - the busiest in the country. Business travel was allowed, but nurseries were closed. Back in September 2020, there was a big campaign in the UK press to get everyone back to work. Celebrities posed next to quotes saying you'd lose your job if you didn't go back to the office. The works. Many people went. We chose to re-open universities, too, even though the movement of students back and forth between home and dorms was likely to be a constant flood of superspreader events. We could have chosen to keep nurseries and primary schools open during much of the pandemic, and avoided crushing women under domestic work (which is now well documented) while harming the development of children by pulling them out of stimulating environments designed to help nurture them. We always had a budget for transmission that varied by age group, and we decided to blow that budget on students and workers at the expense of children. As a society, our choices and priorities are absolutely ghastly. Lockdowns were and still are right, but not for children.