Reopening schools during the pandemic had no effect on Covid cases, hospitalizations or death rates Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland and the United Kingdom, concludes a newly published study, writes Jonathan Turley. “No consistent patterns" were found.
Children suffered "educational and psychological harm from the shutting down of schools," writes Turley. "The study confirms what dissenters said all along: there is no evidence that this was necessary or had any benefit to society."
A professor of public interest law at George Washington University , Turley is the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”
School closures have been failing to stop the spread of disease for 140 years, writes Sanjeev Sabhlok in the Times of India. But they "cause great harm."
Students from disadvantaged families fell even farther behind in school and may never catch up. They lost academic learning, social skills, work habits and emotional health, and deepened their addiction to screens.
During the pandemic, Jay Bhattacharya, Trump's new director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), warned that school closures, masking and social distancing would "do more harm than good," writes Paul E. Peterson in Education Next. In 2021, the Stanford medical professor said there was "overwhelming evidence schools should open immediately, everywhere." He was vilified. But he was right.
In Sweden, where schools remained opened, "no children died," and teachers had lower Covid rates than people in other professions. Dr. Bhattacharya said.
Trends in International Mathematics and Science Survey, or TIMSS, shows what happened to students between 2019 and 2023, writes Peterson, a Harvard professor. "U.S. math performance nose-dived 18 points in 4th grade and 17 points in 8th grade. In Sweden, scores went up by nine points in 4th grade and by 14 points in 8th grade. In 2019, the United States led Sweden in math performance for both cohorts, but by 2023 it had fallen behind."
The per capita death and hospitalization rate for children 6-15 y/o was 15% higher in 2020 than 2019. Just because the death rate is low did not mean that it could not go up. In addition, a large number of teachers and staff would have been infected.
And as has been pointed out by many, Dr Jay Bhattacharya stated in the spring of 2021 that the pandemic was over when in reality, the total deaths in the U.S. in 2021, 2022, and 2023 were all above 3 million compared to 2.75 million in 2019.