> The evidence from kids who get sick enough to miss a lot of school is that at worst it takes three years for them to be indistinguishable from those with uninterrupted school attendance.

Is this really true if the entire class missed a few years? It is very different having one kid who missed a lot and then later interacts with kids who all didn't miss a lot, and a class where every kid is behind a couple of years.

It's not like every kid is falling behind though. Plus you only need to look at history, and probably within your own family to find a few examples, of generations of children who are educated throughout hard truths and stressful times like war or famine and go on to be alright. Zoom and a mask isn't ideal, but a lot less stressful in comparison to something that could easily have given you significant PTSD.

> It's not like every kid is falling behind though.

Yes, in many places it really is. Look at what test results have been released - there is a tiny cohort of kids that managed to remain close to the normal level of achievement, and generally in areas where parents are heavily involved in schooling their kids.

> It's not like every kid is falling behind though.

I wouldn't be surprised if kids who fell behind during remote school are clustered at the same schools.

I kinda agree that long term harms are overstated. I will even add they are overstated for ideological reasons.

> Plus you only need to look at history, and probably within your own family to find a few examples, of generations of children who are educated throughout hard truths and stressful times like war or famine and go on to be alright.

But, this is not true. If you look at generations that grew in hard times, they were doing worst. Generations that grew in war are more violent then peace generations. They have more mental health issues, drink more and so on. Famines have long term impact too. There were even studies about Holocaust survivors - even their children have more anxieties and similar mental health issues. The even affected parenting and communication of survivors enough to change children.

Education achievements now are better then they were in those generations.

If you read the second paper you cited, directly from the abstract, you'll see that they explicitly said that 1918 was "starkly different from today":

> Our results are not inconsistent with an emerging literature that finds negative short-run effects of COVID-19-related school closures on learning. The situation in 1918 was starkly different from today: (1) schools closed in 1918 for many fewer days on average, (2) the 1918 virus was much deadlier to young adults and children, boosting absenteeism even in schools that stayed open, and (3) the lack of effective remote learning platforms in 1918 may have reduced the scope for school closures to increase socioeconomic inequality.

Furthermore, from the paper:

> Another important contrast is that school closures in the 1918-19 pandemic were substantially shorter than current COVID-19 related school closures, potentially limiting their effects. In our sample of 1918-19 school closures, the average closure length was 36 days, and some cities decided to make up for missing school days by extending the school year.

Closing schools is just one of the many measures society has taken to steal the prime years of life from the young to give to the elderly.