People always clothe their criticism in "teachers unions", but deep down people just naturally seem to think that teachers are expendable, that it's not a real job, that it's what someone does instead of a real career. And we wonder why our K12 schools aren't better.

For any respiratory virus, transmission risk is about proximity and time. Close proximity can be okay if it's brief. Time can be okay if people keep good distance, have good ventilation, good masks, etc. But if you're near a carrier for an extended period of time, that's a problem. There is no job where someone is in closer contact with larger numbers of people, for more extended periods of time, than a K12 teacher.

Moreover, the fact that covid poses so little risk to kids is actually a very dangerous thing for teachers and parents. It means that kids can be extremely efficient vectors to spread the disease without showing any symptoms.

And now we have news organizations trying to "both sides" the issue of politicization of covid science, saying the administration is "caving to teachers unions" when "the science says schools are safe." The science doesn't say anything of the sort. What the science says is encouraging, but complicated, and the data on what people want to know is very thin.

People keep touting this study of Wisconsin schools where the covid rates within schools stayed low despite very high rates in the broader community. That's great, but it doesn't come close to giving us the kind of assurance to say "the science says it's safe to reopen schools." They only followed about a dozen schools, so the sample size is way too low to be sure they've captured something as statistically volatile as a schoolwide outbreak. Those schools also had very specific (and generally quite good) facilities and protocols. Also, the data was taken in Wisconsin, in winter, which is very different than, say, Los Angeles in the spring. We also know that variants are continually being naturally selected to spread more easily under our masking protocols. More transmissive variants have now largely taken over in some states and not in others.


We now have most health care workers and nursing home patients vaccinated. We can vaccinate particularly important groupings of people quite rapidly. Our focus now should be K12 teachers and day care workers. There's no reason to think that any other group is more important right now.

Until then: yes, nobody likes Zoom classes. But everybody's used to Zoom classes. It's not that big a deal to wait a few more months.