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Weird that seemingly only the US decided to close their schools for so long though. And the states that did stay closed don't have much better results (if at al

Weird that seemingly only the US decided to close their schools for so long though. And the states that did stay closed don't have much better results (if at all) than all those countries who re opened schools by the end of the 2020 school year if they closed them at all. The results basically don't agree with you

rainsford 3y ago
I don't think there is a good way to study this, but one confounding variable I could see is that while kids in schools are fairly obviously great disease spreading vectors in general, the fact that COVID is relatively contagious might have made school spread less of a factor. In other words, for diseases that don't spread as readily, school spread may be a more significant factor since less hospitable environments might not allow them to spread at all or only very slowly. Since COVID spreads well in all sorts of environments, whether or not school spread was controlled or not would matter less since it would still spread. And while parts of the US did have some pretty strict school closures for quite a while, other things being much less restricted might have meant the spread (or lack thereof) in schools didn't matter much since it was still spreading everywhere else. Whatever one might think of school closing as a policy, arguably the weirdest thing was that even in parts of the US that had more COVID restrictions in general, school closings were a uniquely restrictive outlier while everything else was relaxed. As was pointed out at the time, adults could go to packed bars far earlier than students could go to school. Even if school closings were worth it to control the spread, only closing schools seems like a questionable strategy.
Izkata 3y ago
At least in Chicago they kept trying to open back up, but the teachers refused return to the classroom.
- drewbug01 3y ago
  That’s a stark misrepresentation of what happened here - the district refused to provide adequate (and, at times previously agreed-upon) safety measures. Every teacher I know wants to educate their kids. They wanted to do so without putting their lives at risk, which is a reasonable thing to ask.
fundad 3y ago
Schools stayed closed because they were waiting for the funding that didn’t come until 2021. Schools closed because of a shelter-in-place order from the CDC. Fed was out of options after calling it a hoax during 2019 instead of preparing. There should have been a plan to reopen schools before the CDC’s “14 days”.
cmrdporcupine 3y ago
Schools were closed even more aggressively in parts of Canada. 20 weeks total in Ontario, which was the most in the country and one of the highest in the western world.

rainsford 3y ago

I don't think there is a good way to study this, but one confounding variable I could see is that while kids in schools are fairly obviously great disease spreading vectors in general, the fact that COVID is relatively contagious might have made school spread less of a factor. In other words, for diseases that don't spread as readily, school spread may be a more significant factor since less hospitable environments might not allow them to spread at all or only very slowly. Since COVID spreads well in all sorts of environments, whether or not school spread was controlled or not would matter less since it would still spread. And while parts of the US did have some pretty strict school closures for quite a while, other things being much less restricted might have meant the spread (or lack thereof) in schools didn't matter much since it was still spreading everywhere else. Whatever one might think of school closing as a policy, arguably the weirdest thing was that even in parts of the US that had more COVID restrictions in general, school closings were a uniquely restrictive outlier while everything else was relaxed. As was pointed out at the time, adults could go to packed bars far earlier than students could go to school. Even if school closings were worth it to control the spread, only closing schools seems like a questionable strategy.

Izkata 3y ago

At least in Chicago they kept trying to open back up, but the teachers refused return to the classroom.

drewbug01 3y ago
That’s a stark misrepresentation of what happened here - the district refused to provide adequate (and, at times previously agreed-upon) safety measures. Every teacher I know wants to educate their kids. They wanted to do so without putting their lives at risk, which is a reasonable thing to ask.

fundad 3y ago

Schools stayed closed because they were waiting for the funding that didn’t come until 2021. Schools closed because of a shelter-in-place order from the CDC. Fed was out of options after calling it a hoax during 2019 instead of preparing. There should have been a plan to reopen schools before the CDC’s “14 days”.

cmrdporcupine 3y ago

Schools were closed even more aggressively in parts of Canada. 20 weeks total in Ontario, which was the most in the country and one of the highest in the western world.