New York Times Op-Ed Claims 'Trump Was Right' About Schools and COVID
A New York Times columnist has begrudgingly admitted that President Donald Trump was right on insisting for the last several months that schools remain open for in-person learning.
Trump has stated repeatedly that the nation’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic cannot be worse than the disease itself, and in that category is the closing down of the schools.
“Some things are true even though President Trump says them,” wrote Times columnist Nicholas Kristof.
“Trump has been demanding for months that schools reopen, and on that he seems to have been largely right,” he continued.
“Schools, especially elementary schools, do not appear to have been major sources of coronavirus transmission, and remote learning is proving to be a catastrophe for many low-income children.”
Kristof went on to note that despite the empirical evidence against it, New York City shut down its public school system for in-person learning last week, impacting over 1 million students.
Other major school systems like Los Angeles and Chicago have remained closed all fall.
Kristof lamented that lower income students — who often are minorities — are most impacted by the closure decisions, while those from wealthier families can find alternatives.
“School closures magnify these inequities, as many private schools remain open and affluent parents are better able to help kids adjust to remote learning,” he wrote.
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School also provides children a safe place from potentially abusive parents.
White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany highlighted this summer that the science is with the president on the issue.
Trump wants schools to open, “and when he says open, he means open in full, kids being able to attend each and every day,” she said.
McEnany: Pres. Trump wants schools to open, “and when he says open, he means open in full, kids being able to attend each and every day.”
“The science should not stand in the way of this,” McEnany says, before adding, “the science is on our side here.” https://t.co/oTesjWWtbc pic.twitter.com/iD8ACDb5Tr
— ABC News (@ABC) July 17, 2020
McEnany pointed out that other Western nations have made a priority out of keeping kids in school amid COVID, with no major issues.
“The science is on our side,” she said.
CNBC reported that a German study released in June found that young people do not play a significant role in transmitting the coronavirus.
The medical faculty of the TU Dresden and University Hospital Carl Gustav Carus tested approximately 1,500 students and 500 teachers in May for the presence of COVID-19 antibodies in their blood.
“The results showed that out of 2,045 blood samples collected from students and teachers from across 13 secondary schools in the region only 12 samples were found to contain antibodies against Covid-19,” the report said.
Further, 24 participants in the study had at least one known case of coronavirus in their households, yet only one of these participants was found to have the antibodies.
The study concluded that schools did not become coronavirus “hotspots” after reopening, as some feared would happen.
Further, NBC News assembled a panel of five pediatricians from around in the country in July, and all of them offered the same assessment: It is safe to put kids back in the classroom.
“In the U.S., children make up about 22 percent of the population, but kids account for only 2 percent of coronavirus cases so far, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,” the NBC report said.
All five physicians said they would not hesitate to send their own children to school.
Dr. William Raszka, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at the University of Vermont’s Larner College of Medicine, said children are not good spreaders of the virus to adults, either.
“The younger you are, probably the less likely you are to be able to transmit the disease,” he said.
At a news briefing last week, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield affirmed America’s students belong in school.
“The truth is for kids K through 12, one of the safest places they can be from our perspective is to remain in school, and it’s really important that following the data, making sure we don’t make emotional decisions about what to close and what not to close,” he said.
Democrats have a reflex response of being against pretty much everything that Trump is for, usually to the detriment of their constituents.
Never has this been more true than liberal politicians’ push to keep schools closed. Trump is right; they should be open.
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This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
