Let's be real about school closures.

One of the things I really dislike is when a writer asserts an absurdity to try and back up a poor argument. In a recent Adventist Today column the anonymous author of the pseudo help column writes in his or her article entitled: Aunt Sevvy, My Daughter Wants to Homeschool!

If schools open, whether full-time or part-time, for in-person schooling, there is no guarantee they will remain open for the whole school year. Some countries that attempted to open schools closed them again because coronavirus cases skyrocketed. (And no, children are not immune to this infection. While not as susceptible as older people, they can contract it, and some have died.) If schools opened and then had to close again it would create the same panic and disruption to the schedules that happened last school year, and that was a nightmare for everyone! If your daughter is planning ahead to school her children from home it might save them the trauma they had to endure last year. 

First what countries opened schools and closed them? The author simply expects us to believe that schools reopened and then closed because cases skyrocketed. In fact, a number of European countries have opened their schools and not closed them. Such as Germany, France, Denmark, Belgium, Netherlands, Austria, Switzerland, Portugal, Greece, Poland, and Sweden which never closed. From the BBC article Coronavirus: How lockdown is being lifted across Europe. No mention of a country that opened up schools and closed them! 

The author then counters the argument that no one makes. "And no, children are not immune to this infection". The only reason someone might say that children are immune to the infection, though I have never heard anyone say that, would be because the infection and more importantly the death rate is so low.

'To combat the paucity of evidence around COVID- 19 and pediatric patients, U.K. researchers conducted the largest clinical study on children outside of China to date. The study spanned over 20 European countries and multiple age groups, ultimately including 582 children and adolescents between the ages of 3 days old and 18 years old with confirmed SARS- CoV-2 infection. The study found that the majority of patients under 18 years old experienced a mild disease and less than 1% of them died. COVID-19 in children is usually mild, deaths rare, study says

Some other info:

The CDC researchers found the 2,572 pediatric cases among 149,082 cases in total. That is, pediatric cases made up just 1.7 percent of the cases examined. This is a significant underrepresentation of that age group in the US. Children under 18 make up 22 percent of the country’s population.

Of the 2,572 pediatric cases, nearly 60 percent were in children aged 10 to 17. Youngsters under one year, those aged one to four, and five to nine, made up 15 percent, 11 percent, and 15 percent of the cases, respectively. Among 2,490 cases with sex information, 57 percent were male.

The data also suggested that the cases were largely mild, though they only had data on symptoms from 291 of the 2,572 pediatric cases. Of those 291 cases, 78 (27 percent) did not have fever, cough, or shortness of breath (the most common symptoms in adults). And of those 78 cases, 53 didn’t report any symptoms. That said, researchers could not dub these cases asymptomatic because it was unclear if all of their potential symptoms had been recorded. One case was reported as asymptomatic. https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/04/cdc-reports-data-on-2500-covid-19-cases-in-kids-including-3-deaths/

The article actually never even answers the supposed original letter which is just as well. As the saying goes garbage in, garbage out. The real question is why not give some actual facts. There is a reason people like the author want to give a false impression to the readers. There is a reason with all the evidence that school closures are unnecessary, there are still people pretending it is not safe.