Lookback at COVID School Closings
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Book Review: An Abundance of Caution: American Schools, the Virus, and a Story of Bad Decisions
by David Zweig, Cambridge, MA, The MIT Press, 2025
“First, do no harm.” —Hippocrates of Kos
In March 2020, school systems across the United States locked down, as part of the effort to contain the COVID-19 pandemic. Among the millions affected were the two young children of David Zweig, a widely published freelance journalist. In the following weeks, Zweig saw his children withering under the lockdown, despite the best efforts of himself and wife, both of whom are tech-savvy professionals.
Zweig began to wonder how other kids were faring under the lockdown. He began to wonder if the lockdown was accomplishing its goal of containing the pandemic—or if it was even necessary. And being an investigative journalist by profession, he began to investigate the lockdown—to find out what was really going on. As he put it:
You must always try to get to the primary source, digging further and further down. Time and again, something that seemed true turned out not to be so. This mindset … informed my motivation to get to the bottom of the pandemic policies regarding schools.
The result of his investigation is his new book, An Abundance of Caution. In it, Zweig details how and why our government shut down our elementary and secondary schools in reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic, then kept them shut despite all evidence that the virus presented minimal danger to children, and that schools presented minimal danger to the public at large.
In the Beginning Was the Model
The story Zweig tells begins in June 2006, with a conference in Atlanta that brought together persons from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), international corporations, and universities from around the country. The purpose of the meeting was to review a plan proposed by a panel of government experts for using non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs), such as closures, social distancing, and masking, to contain a pandemic.
The plan used models to forecast how effective NPIs would be in controlling a pandemic. Models are built from assumptions, which ideally are derived from real-world data, and formulas that compute an effect based on those assumptions.
It’s important to distinguish models from studies: models are based on assumptions, which may or may not be correct; whereas studies examine data gleaned from the real world. At the risk of oversimplification, models predict whereas studies prove. Media reports often confused the two, reporting that a “study” had “proved” something, when in fact they were describing a model that had predicted something, but had proved nothing.
School closures lay at the core of the government’s plan. Zweig found that this strategy was based on the belief that schools and school-age children “form the backbone” of the spread of viruses in a pandemic.
This belief was based on the work of a researcher named Robert Glass, who, while working on a school project with his 14-year-old daughter, developed a model for containing a pandemic by closing schools—and nothing else. He called it a “simple, straightforward solution” to the vexing problem of containing a pandemic.
Glass’s model, in turn, depended in part on the work of a computer modeler named Neil Ferguson. Ferguson’s model (which was for influenza, not a coronavirus) assumed that, in Zweig’s words, “37 percent of transmission occurs in schools and workplaces, with schools having twice the transmission rate as workplaces.” So, where did Ferguson get these figures of 37% and a double transmission rate in schools? In his paper, he states that “this choice is arbitrary” (emphasis added).
So: the federal government’s playbook put school closures at the heart of its strategy for containing a pandemic, based on the model created by Robert Glass, which, in turn, was based in part on the model created by Neil Ferguson, which was based on assumptions that Ferguson pulled out of thin air (though he may have preferred to call them an informed guess).
Computer models are powerful tools of analysis, but they can mislead. They can hide the assumptions that underlie them, as well as the formulas with which they process those assumptions.
The acronym “GIGO” means “Garbage In, Garbage Out:” that is, feeding bad data into a computer will produce bad output. But data professionals know that “GIGO” also means “Garbage In, Gospel Out”: that the colorful graphs and neatly printed columns of numbers can coax users into accepting output derived from garbage.
Data professionals also know that for every problem, there is a solution that is simple, elegant, and wrong. The “gospel” generated by Ferguson’s model (based, remember, on what he said were “arbitrary” figures), led Glass to develop his simple, elegant model of containing a pandemic by closing schools. And the federal government’s panel of experts placed Glass’s model at the core of their playbook for containing a pandemic: a simple, elegant solution that would prove to be catastrophically wrong.
Closures Begin
In January and February of 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic began to be recognized as a serious threat, the government implemented a series of NPIs, including shutting down “non-essential” businesses, masking, social distancing, and closing schools. The government’s playbook had three milestones for closures:
Up to two weeks during the pandemic’s early stages. The goal is to buy time for authorities to figure out what sort of disease they were dealing with, and how best to handle it.
Up to six weeks in areas with outbreaks. The goal is to “flatten the curve”—that is, slow the rate of transmission, so hospitals and health-care providers aren’t overwhelmed by a surge in cases.
Up to six months, to allow time to develop a vaccine. This interval was reasonable for developing a vaccine for a new strain of flu, but unrealistic for a novel virus like COVID-19.
In March 2020, the playbook began to be implemented. The first state to close its schools was Ohio, on March 12, 2020. The following day, Governor Tony Evers issued an executive order to close Wisconsin schools. At the time, schools were expected to reopen on April 6—though, as elsewhere throughout the country, that didn’t happen.
What the Data Showed
Yet even before the school closures began, data were being published that suggested strongly that school closures were the wrong strategy.
The February 24, 2020, issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association published a report from China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention that studied 72,314 cases of COVID-19 infection. The authors reported that, in Zweig’s words:
…just 1 percent of the patients were under ten years old, and another 1 percent were aged ten to nineteen. Further, there were zero deaths in the youngest cohort.
At the same time, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported that of all the persons infected with COVID-19, only 2.4% were 18 years or age or under. And of that 2.4%, only 0.2% had what the WHO called “critical disease.”
In other words: Of all the persons with COVID, only one person in every 40 was 18 years of age or younger. And of all the persons with COVID, only one person in every 20,000 was both 18 years of age or younger and had critical disease. The WHO’s report concluded that COVID “in children appears to be relatively rare and mild.”
So: from the beginning of the pandemic, and before American schools were shut down, data had been published showing that children were much less likely to get the disease than were adults; and if children got the disease, they were much less likely to become seriously ill.
In an op-ed published in the New York Times in March 2020, American researcher Jennifer Nuzzo pointed out that this pattern is the opposite of the pattern seen with the flu, in which children are more likely to get the disease, and to become seriously ill from it. Nuzzo concluded it was “likely that school closings will have little effect on its [COVID’s] spread.”
In the coming months, these observations would be supported by data from studies in Europe (where, for the most part, schools had reopened later in the spring of 2020), and from studies in the US on data collected from day-care centers, summer camps, and schools that had remained open. (The US data were collected at first by volunteer researchers, the government showing little interest.)
Yet the schools remained closed.
Computer models are very useful tools for planning how to deal with future problems. However, if data from the real world contradict the the model’s predictions, one should always follow the data and set the model aside, or at least revise the model to incorporate the data. Yet in the US, the powers-that-be ignored the data and stuck with their model. Why?
Why Did US Schools Remain Closed?
The bulk of An Abundance of Caution examines this issue. Bear in mind that by late spring of 2020, nearly every European school system had re-opened, without expensive interventions and without serious problems occurring. At the same time, broad studies of COVID data were showing that children without co-morbidities were much less at risk from the virus than were adults.
A number of factors kept the schools closed. The following are a few of Zweig’s key points, at the risk of condensing over 200 pages of detailed text into a few paragraphs:
The closures began because the federal plan called for them, even though the plan was designed for a pandemic triggered by an influenza virus rather than a novel coronavirus. At the time, a brief period of closure made sense, as officials gathered data and made sense of the situation. Yet first impressions matter, and the first impression that the public received from the initial closures was that children were highly at risk from the disease. In Wisconsin, statements from Governor Evers emphasized that closures were intended primarily to protect children.
The high-level plans did not take into account the effects that long-term closures would have on children: They estimated benefits, but did not examine costs. A physician who prescribes a therapy without considering its side-effects is guilty of malpractice; yet for school closures, that is exactly what happened.
The decision-makers largely were insulated from effects of their decisions. Those of the “laptop class” could cope with shutdowns and remote learning more easily than could the poor, or the “essential workers” (everyone from garbage collectors to airline pilots) whose work requires them to be out of the house.
“Intervention bias:” In brief, it’s much easier to make an intervention than it is to stop it. Once the policy is implemented, once the ball gets rolling, it’s hard to stop.
“An abundance of caution”—or, in other words, “Why take chances?” If schools reopen and some kids die, the administrators are blamed; if the schools remain closed and kids lose a precious year of schooling, well, they’re just following recommendations.
An absence of clear leadership. Federal authorities left matters up to the states (which, arguably, the Constitution obliges them to do). State governors implemented their own policies. In some states, decisions on when and how to reopen were left up to local school districts. At the school-district level, some administrators worked tirelessly to get kids back into the classrooms; others did not.
“The fog of war.” It’s easy to be objective after the fact. In the midst of a crisis, though, it’s difficult to evaluate exactly what’s happening, and harder still to figure out what to do. In the absence of a clearly defined alternative, we prefer to to stick with the plan.
Media malpractice. Media, both print and electronic, tended to emphasize horror stories (and the virus generated plenty of them), but without putting them in context.
“The science is settled.” The powers-that-be in the media and government determined early on that there was one and only way of dealing with this crisis. Those who opposed, or even questioned, “the science” were branded as “anti-science,” “killers,” “racists” (a favorite of the teachers’ unions), or all of the above. A case in point is the shameful treatment inflicted on Jay Bhattacharya, Sunetra Gupta, and Martin Kulldorff their authorship of The Great Barrington Declaration of October 2020, by the media and the heads of the CDC.
Trump derangement syndrome. On July 6, 2020, President Trump tweeted, “SCHOOLS MUST OPEN IN THE FALL!!!” This inaugurated a cascade of tweets, each worded in the president’s distinctively indelicate style, promoting the reopening of schools. Given that President Trump is loathed by the Left, the result was, in Zweig’s words:
The notion of opening schools was now seen as explicitly part of Trump’s “open everything up” campaign, and in the process became radioactive to many liberals and much of the intelligentsia. …it was anathema for a Democratic politician or official, or journalist or news organization (other than conservative outlets) to ever be seen as agreeing with him on anything.
All of this brings us to the key question. In Zweig’s words:
Why is it that journalists, and the broader educated elite traditionally, or at least ideally, bring great skepticism to the claims made by and the motives of every major institution in society, from religion to big business to government, yet when it came to the pandemic policies espoused by [Anthony] Fauci, the CDC, and the public health establishment—especially on schools and children—in so many instances their skepticism all but vanished? At least some part of this could be explained by tribalism. Like Orwell had observed in World War II, for journalists at prestigious outlets, the majority of whom are politically aligned with those in the public health establishment, investigating or critiquing the policies espoused by the people on their team was tantamount to helping the enemy.
…On two separate occasions, once by a pediatrician, and once by an infectious diseases physician, I was told privately that by my calling attention to the lack of evidence or conflicting evidence for a particular policy I was causing harm by allowing Trumpers to question the CDC. I wasn’t wrong, but I was helping the wrong people.
To paraphrase Golda Meir, the liberal tribe hated Trump more than they loved their children.
By substituting ideology for data, by insisting on authority in place of reason, by adhering to a model and ignoring data, the decision to keep Americans schools closed was profoundly anti-scientific. A forest of lawn signs proclaiming “SCIENCE IS REAL” cannot hide that fact.
Conclusion
An Abundance of Caution is required reading for every concerned citizen. It explores a topic of major concern. It is a model for presenting a large, complex body of information in a way that can be readily understood by the general reader. Most importantly, the author wrote in a spirit not of partisanship, but in a relentless pursuit of the truth.
However, be warned: It’s a hard read. After every few pages, I had to put the book down as I seethed with anger at the sheer, brazen stupidity of it all.
A book like An Abundance of Caution could be written about every aspect of the COVID pandemic: from the origin of the virus, to why certain political parades were encouraged yet a man walking on a deserted beach was arrested. I hope they’ll be written soon. And I hope that, like An Abundance of Caution, they’ll be written not to promote an ideology or a party, but to articulate the truth.
I don’t know what David Zweig’s politics are. Given his profession and where he lives, I assume he has little regard for Republicans, and less for MAGA. What of it? “Speak the truth and shame the devil,” and leave the stultifying ideological litmus tests to the progressive tribe.
For only the truth can keep us free.
—RPKC Member Frederick Butzen
School Shutdowns in Kenosha
One Family’s Experience
We spoke with Kenosha parent Valerie Kretchmer concerning her family’s experience with the school shutdowns in Kenosha.
Valerie was born in Texas in 1979, and grew up in Illinois. She earned a degree in marketing at Northern Illinois University. After graduation, she worked at OfficeMax, serving first as a director of business development, then as a business-development manager.
Now mostly a full-time mother, Valerie lives in Pleasant Prairie, where she serves on the parks commission. She has two children, one of whom is in the KUSD, and the other attends the St Joseph Academy kindergarten.
Question: Your child in KUSD has special needs. Could you describe the nature of your child's special need?
Her name is Alena, my older child. She has a mostly physical disability called femoral hypoplasia with unusual facies syndrome. She does have an IEP [individualized education program] with goals for reading and writing. She uses a wheelchair and walker to get around.
Q: Can you describe the day the schools shut down?
My husband and I had just taken in my youngest, Gianna, through foster care on Friday, March 13. She was one day old. I had been hearing rumors the schools were shutting down. My brother in Tokyo had been telling me they were shutting down before us, so I knew it was coming. We were all notified from the school and were told our children would have to attend virtually.
Q: In the first few weeks after shutdown, did you receive assistance from KUSD?
Very little. Alena didn’t do well online, so it required a lot of hands on from my end.
Q: Can you describe a typical school day under the shutdown?
Right after breakfast, Alena would sit with her computer at her desk, which we set up in our dining area, until almost 4:00 or 5:00 in the afternoon. Her special-education teacher would come on the computer at the end of the day to see if she needed help, but it mostly was to just check in.
It was very difficult, but I made Alena complete all the work and tried to help her when I could. It was tough with a newborn baby and cooking three meals a day for our family, but somehow we made it through. We did have to take mental breaks, and of course I had to take care of Gianna in between helping Alena. Nick helped where he could.
Q: Over the following months, did the situation improve?
Not much, but we did get used to it. We had to boost our internet, since my husband was home and Alena was full time on the computer. Once summer started, it was much better.
Q: When did your child return to school? Was it full time? Were restrictions in place, such as masking?
In the fall [of 2020], it was optional to go in person or virtual. Alena chose in person. They did have to wear masks. We were full time.
Q: At what point would you say that the schools were back to what they were pre-Covid?
I don't know if they ever fully returned to what they were pre-Covid. Our children lost a lot in those months, so I feel they fell behind. Our KUSD School District seemed to have lower scores after Covid, especially in the upper grades.
Q: Did the shutdown have any long-term effects on your child?
Afterwards, I saw more depression and anxiety for Alena. She sees a child psychologist now, but seems better. She definitely appreciates socializing more.
Q: Any final thoughts?
I will never accept school shut downs again. It was not good for our students or our schools.
