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The Miscalculations of Covid School Closures

Millions of American children were denied regular in-person instruction for more than a year after the virus emerged. What did we get right—and wrong?

had been cowed into walking back their common-sense appeal on behalf of children’s education and well-being by a left-leaning cohort of powerful political actors—in this case, the leadership of teachers’ unions, which are major Democratic Party donors and which represent some 4.8 million members. This was the same President whose Administration disastrously stalled on obtaining N95 masks and ventilators early in the pandemic, who speculated about the curative properties of disinfectant injections, and who, dozens of times, promised the American public that the coronavirus would simply “go away.” But “An Abundance of Caution” posits that Trump’s flagrant mishandling of the COVID crisis gave cover to the rampant (but less obvious) dissembling, posturing, and about-facing of élite institutions and public-health experts, which Zweig diligently itemizes. It wasn’t Trump who corralled grade schoolers within these depressing partitions, or who made preschool swim teachers wear cumbersome plastic visors in the pool, or who forced high-school wrestlers to compete in masks even after they were vaccinated, or any number of other empty shows of vigilance.

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