'WTF are we doing to our kids?': Everyone needs to read this ProPublica article on the harm lockdowns are causing to schoolchildren

Alec MacGillis from ProPublica has a brutal but must-read article out on the harm lockdowns are causing to schoolchildren:

The pandemic year has been brutal for young people. And it's been much tougher in some places than others. Here's my latest for @propublica, a story from a part of the country where the line between disruption and normalcy was drawn especially starkly. https://t.co/ECsTdsDHSp

— Alec MacGillis (@AlecMacGillis) March 8, 2021

She looked at neighboring towns on the Texas/New Mexico border where schools in Texas are open while those in New Mexico were shut down, including sports, with fatal consequences:

A devastating @AlecMacGillis report on neighboring towns in New Mexico and Texas. One kept school and sports open. The other closed. Guess what happened? https://t.co/4ySjmMTzDi

— Jonathan Chait (@jonathanchait) March 9, 2021

We’ll warn you now that reading about these suicides is rough:

This is so heartbreaking. For more than a year, we have forced kids to sacrifice so much of what gives them meaning, and it's killing them. via @AlecMacGillis https://t.co/2Q3F4k25JZ

— Robby Soave (@robbysoave) March 8, 2021

OPEN THE SCHOOLS NOW:

This is an absolutely horrific tale from @AlecMacGillis, and should serve as a lesson (one coming too late for the kids discussed in the story) that schools need to re-open for in-person, full-time tuition and sports yesterday. https://t.co/ewPFMQlaC7

— Liz Mair (@LizMair) March 9, 2021

And if you don’t have a chance to read the entire article right now, this thread from Pradheep Shanker is a great summary (but please do read the article — it’s worth it):

"Texas’s response to the coronavirus was freewheeling. Most notably, it gave local school districts leeway in deciding whether to open…masks in the hallways and did contact tracing for positive cases of coronavirus, but everything else went pretty much as usual."

— Pradheep J. Shanker (@Neoavatara) March 9, 2021

"NM response was the opposite. Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham took one of the most aggressive lockdown stances and issued stringent guidelines for school reopening, so stringent that Hobbs was allowed to bring back only a sliver of its students for in-person instruction."

— Pradheep J. Shanker (@Neoavatara) March 9, 2021

"As time has gone on, evidence has grown on one side of the equation: the harm being done to children by restricting their “circulation.” There is the well-documented fall-off in student academic performance at schools that have shifted to virtual learning…"

— Pradheep J. Shanker (@Neoavatara) March 9, 2021

"copious evidence now shows, is exacerbating racial and class divides. This toll has led a growing number of epidemiologists, docs etc to argue for reopening schools as broadly as possible, amid growing evidence that schools are not major venues for transmission of the virus."

— Pradheep J. Shanker (@Neoavatara) March 9, 2021

"“An entire generation between the ages of 5 and 18 has been effectively removed from society at large,” wrote Maryland pediatrician Lavanya Sithanandam in The Washington Post. “They do not have the same ability to vote or speak out.”"

— Pradheep J. Shanker (@Neoavatara) March 9, 2021

Read the story about Hobbs, NM, just across the border from Texas…and tell me we aren't doing harm:

"Even if NM was steady, to those in Hobbs, 3 youth suicides plus half-dozen other attempts by students in a matter of months in a population of 39k felt like its own epidemic."

— Pradheep J. Shanker (@Neoavatara) March 9, 2021

"Coach Stevens got the news from the school principal that afternoon. Like others in Hobbs, he was not unprepared for such calls…He asked, “Are you sure you got the name right?” He called back five minutes later to say that yes, he had gotten the name right."

— Pradheep J. Shanker (@Neoavatara) March 9, 2021

I am teary eyed reading this.

WTF are we doing to our kids?

And do people simply not want to accept the reality?

Its outrageous, stupid, antiscientific, and obscene .

— Pradheep J. Shanker (@Neoavatara) March 9, 2021

I mean…

"Fuller told me she had received mail from the New Mexico ed dept. She opened it and found a letter demanding to know why Landon had been truant from his online classes…the bureaucratic oversight stunned her. “He would be in school if he wasn’t dead,” she said."

— Pradheep J. Shanker (@Neoavatara) March 9, 2021

And don't blame teachers: " [She] had been among majority of teachers who were willing to return…not only did most students leave their cameras off, some wouldn’t even turn on their microphones. “I can’t see them, I can’t even hear them,” she said. “They didn’t want to talk.”

— Pradheep J. Shanker (@Neoavatara) March 9, 2021

Again, big kudos to @propublica and @AlecMacGillis for writing this. We've really lacked good, honest reporting on this. Very fair, balanced piece.

— Pradheep J. Shanker (@Neoavatara) March 9, 2021