A Washington Post opinion piece urges us to accept that “many schools will likely have to close because of omicron.”
This is completely false. Schools do not have to do anything about omicron. The data make that abundantly clear.
Michael T. Osterholm, the famously panicky director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, and Cory Anderson, a Ph.D. candidate in the school of public health at the university, write that it is clear that in-person education is vastly superior that remote “learning” in nearly every way. But after that, they lose the plot entirely. They’re treating COVID-19 as if we are stuck on March 2020 and not as it should be dealt with in January 2022.
Because omicron spreads more easily, they write: “We can expect daily cases in the United States to nearly triple that of our previous peak in the coming weeks.” This would have been a problem in March 2020. It is not and has not been since vaccines (and now treatments) have become readily available. In fact, the two writers even admit that “it seems the vaccines still protect against severe disease and death.” That is where this discussion should begin and end.
But it doesn’t. Osterholm and Anderson cite surging hospitalizations among both the general public and among children as proof that school is too dangerous to continue in person. This comes despite the fact that Dr. Anthony Fauci and states such as New York are finally distinguishing between hospitalizations because of COVID-19 and hospitalizations for other reasons that involve testing positive for COVID-19 during treatment.
This applies especially to children. As my colleague Tim Carney has noted, child hospitalizations typically rise during this time of year because of the flu and the respiratory syncytial virus. No article blaring the siren about child hospitalizations from COVID-19 has yet shown that those children are being hospitalized because of COVID-19. Osterholm and Anderson decline to do that as well.
As the Associated Press has finally concluded, case numbers do not matter anymore. Yes, omicron is highly infectious, but the vaccine “remains highly effective at preventing severe COVID illnesses” and death. By every available metric we have, unvaccinated children are not at the risk that Osterholm and Anderson assert they must be. Vaccinated or not, they are not at risk to themselves or other children. If teachers and parents are concerned about the spread of the virus, they should get vaccinated. The choice of certain adults to not to get vaccinated, and to forgo the protection from serious illness or death that vaccination brings, must not be turned into an emergency for everyone else.
Osterholm and Anderson have it all backward. Schools do not “have” to close because of COVID-19. If anything is open in our society right now, it should be schools.
Based on all of the data we have about COVID-19 and children, vaccinations, and deaths, along with the fact that businesses and sports arenas are open, it is completely inexcusable to shut down schools in order to make the most irrational and panicked among us feel better or to cater to adults who knowingly refuse to get a vaccine.
