Gates Package — page 971

When schools close, the losses ripple out far beyond academic learning. Parents have to scramble for child care when their kids are suddenly at home during working hours. Millions of students in the United States and around the world rely on free and reduced-price meals provided at school. In school, kids learn how to interact with their peers, get exercise, and have access to mental health support. Unfortunately, the debate over closing schools has been muddied by some initial data that turned out to be misleading. Early on, there were fewer COVID cases among children, leading many people (including me) to conclude that kids weren't susceptible to infection, or at least not as susceptible as adults are. That was an argument, I thought, for keeping schools open. But it wasn't true. In the United States through March 2021, the rates of infection and illness in children were comparable to the rates in adults ages eighteen to forty-nine, and even higher than the rates in adults ages fifty and older.7 The initial view was probably affected by the fact that many schools were closed; there were fewer cases among children because kids weren't gathering at schools. They weren't less susceptible, they just had fewer opportunities to get infected. And when they did get infected, they were much less likely to show symptoms or get sick enough for their parents to get them tested--a problem that would have been rectified by large-scale testing. Even with that in mind, what I think this all adds up to is that long-term school closures should not be necessary, especially if the world meets the goal of producing enough vaccines for everyone within six months. Once vaccines are available, teachers should be near the front of the line for them (as many were when COVID vaccines first came out). You will probably want to distinguish between younger teachers who don't live with older people and teachers who are older teachers or who do live with old people. (Remember that the age-related risks go down a