They don't need to prove that school closures aren't deleterious.
They don't need to prove that the supposed epidemic of long COVID is actually real.
They don't need to prove that the missed medical appointments and missed routine non-COVID vaccinations aren't going to outpace the supposed benefits of doing the epidemiological equivalent of hiding in your closet from the monster (SARS-2).
They don't need to account for second-order effects, such as the fact that "avoiding" COVID for a month or two is really just postponing it and that we exist in a state of dynamic equilibrium with the countless pathogens we're surrounded by.
No, they just get to assume that their intervention de jur is without harm, and conversely that COVID is the worst thing ever and that SARS-2 is 10 times as deadly as all the other shit we don't spend an excessive amount of time worrying about (Influenza, OC43, noravirus, rhinovirus, you name it)
It’s truly remarkable.
> But yeah I really want to hammer home the point that, the only possible way in which we wouldn't have "been able to keep fully in-person school running last year" is purely itself an artifact of absurd COVID quarantine policies, and has nothing to do with an actual lack of staff nor an actual crippling health problem preventing people from being able to work.
I suspect we will eventually “discover” the same with hospital capacity. When you test everybody on the way in and then have all positive results follow strict, labor intense quarantine protocols regardless of patient symptoms… yeah you will have problems with capacity. Imagine if they tested all patients for other viruses and did this sort of thing…
A lot of the problems we’ve experienced the last year and a half are self-made. Testing everything under the sun for covid and then acting on positive results regardless of symptoms is gonna throw a wrench in just about any machine.