This is the ugliest face of city and state leadership
The mayor’s announcement last Wednesday that the city has reached that threshold, albeit only according to one metric, put its 1.1 million children out on the streets effective immediately. Well, not exactly out on the streets — there’s telephone and Zoom and dedicated teachers and make-it-work principals — but that’s essentially the outcome.
Now, I’m not personally affected by the move, since private schools may stay open. But if it sounds like I’m opposed to closing schools in this way, that’s because I am.
Not because it goes against science — although it does. The surgeon general, who as the highest-ranking doctor in the country knows a thing or two about medicine, tweeted, “Our review of data over the past several months suggests that kids are as safe or safer in school vs. not.” Keeping schools open was credited for New York City’s success in combating the Spanish Flu in 1918.
Not because 3 percent is a made-up number with no scientific value — although it is. (One of de Blasio’s advisors admitted it was “arbitrary.”) Other states and districts are at 10 percent test positivity rates and have schools open. And even in New York state, the rate in schools is 0.93 percent.
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