Control Versus ChoiceJohn Stossel
Aug 30, 2023
COVID cases are up. Hospitalizations climbed 24% last week.
But the media make everything seem scarier than it is. The headline "Up 24%!" comes after dramatic lows. Hospitalizations are still less than half what they were when President Joe Biden said, "The pandemic is over."
Yet the shallow media keep pounding away: "It may be time to break out the masks" headlined CNN.
Frightened people believe. The movie studio Lionsgate reinstated an office mask mandate. Atlanta's Morris Brown College mandated masks and even banned parties.
This month, several school districts in Kentucky and Texas closed. "The safety and wellbeing of our students, staff, and community is a top priority," said the school superintendent in Texas.
But kids rarely get very sick from COVID, and schools aren't COVID hotspots. Studies on tens of thousands of people found "no consistent relationship between in-person K-12 schooling and the spread of the coronavirus."
A Lancet study found Florida had the 12th-fewest excess COVID deaths in the country, even though Florida students went back to school without masks relatively soon.
At least Texas' and Kentucky's closures were isolated and brief. Long-term closures during the pandemic brought America's lowest math and reading scores in decades. Florida's kids suffered less learning loss than kids in other states.
Sweden, which never closed its schools, suffered no learning loss. Sweden's education minister wrote that children were "at much lower risk of serious illness" and that "keeping children learning was vital."
Sweden also imposed fewer restrictions on adults. At the time, Sweden was mocked in the media. NBC called Sweden's openness a "failed experiment."
But Sweden's approach did work. Data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development show that Sweden had fewer excess deaths since COVID than any other European country.
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Source:
https://townhall.com/columnists/johnstossel/2023/08/30/control-versus-choice-n2627716
