Judge Says Students Can Sue Over Remote Learning
And now it is time to hold the politicians who kept schools closed accountable
“Kids are resilient!” was an argument I heard numerous times during the height of the pandemic as their entire worlds were upheaved by politicians who wanted to “slow the spread.” As “14 days to flatten the curve” turned into 18 months of masking, remote learning, canceled therapies, missed rites of passage, and delayed milestones, certain factions kept beating the drum: “Kids are resilient!”
No, they are not. At least not when it comes to the demands made of them during COVID. And they shouldn’t have been expected to be.
From early on, it was clear that children (save those with chronic illnesses) were at lowest risk for severe infection from COVID, despite even Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor falsely claiming that 100,000 children were hospitalized and on ventilators due to COVID. UNICEF reports that of 4.4 million COVID deaths, 17,400 (or 0.4%) were in children under the age of 20. In the United States, children were more likely to die from drowning, vehicle accidents, cancer, cardiovascular disease, flu/pneumonia, and suffocation than from COVID. In kids ages 1-4 years, COVID was the least likely cause of death; in kids over the age of 4, it was second last only to suffocation.
Yet the biggest burden was placed on them. With minimal risk-benefit analysis, we shuttered schools, pushed all kids — including impoverished and special needs kids — to remote learning, slapped masks on their faces, and expected them to just deal with it.
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