During the summer, when they talked about opening schools and claimed that young children weren’t major vectors for the virus, I was very skeptical and assumed it was mostly just an excuse -- but it does actually seem to have worked out! If primary school children were spreading the virus en masse, the current spike would be vastly bigger.

(It’s very unfortunate in the US that school opening has been so strongly politicized.)

Opening the universities is another matter entirely. That definitely shouldn’t have been done. I was going to say “in hindsight” but in fact that was pretty obvious right away.

"Young children transmit less

Researchers suspect that one reason schools have not become COVID-19 hot spots is that children — especially those under the age of 12–14 — are less susceptible to infection than adults, according to a meta-analysis4 of prevalence studies. And once they are infected, young children, including those aged 0–5 years, are less likely to pass the virus on to others, says Haas. In an analysis5 of German schools, Haas’s team found that infections were less common in children aged 6–10 years than in older children and adults working at the schools. “The potential to transmit increases” with age, and adolescents are just as likely to transmit the virus as adults, he says. Teenagers and teachers should be the focus of mitigation measures, such as wearing masks or a return to online lessons when community transmission is high, says Haas."