Closing schools can increase COVID spread

If you were ever a kid, you may have had the same unsettling experience I had once of seeing your teacher outside of a school setting. Maybe she was having dinner at the same burger joint or shopping at the same supermarket. It was shocking to learn teachers existed outside of school and that they were actual humans with full lives.

The error underlying that shock — I see my teachers only in school, and therefore I believe they do not exist outside of school — may seem like a laughable fallacy for only juvenile minds, but that very error underlies much COVID policymaking and commentary.