While being in a blood-red county in the blood-red state of Tennessee did, to some degree, protect my family from the bulk of the Covid-related insanity that gripped the world from March 2020 and beyond, we hardly went unscathed. Our governor, Bill Lee, ordered schools closed from mid-March until the end of the school year. When classes resumed in the Fall, most schools, including ours, required and mercilessly enforced masking, social distancing, and other useless interventions that, over the long haul, caused far more harm than good.
My oldest daughter, a high school freshman in Fall 2020, spent her first week without a single significant human interaction. Yes, she was extremely introverted, but the masking and restrictions went a long way towards preventing her from even having a chance to get to know anyone. We reluctantly allowed her to do remote learning instead of spending an entire year wearing a face gag, and it took her years to recover socially and academically.
The masking and restrictions affected my other kids, too, in various ways, all negative. And even when our governor issued an executive order in the Fall of 2021 carving a parental opt-out to masking requirements, that welcomed reprieve inadvertently created more problems. Not that removing the forced compliance wasn’t worth it, but seemingly overnight, the mask became a virtue signal worn by left-identified students and ditched by many if not most on the right. I remember having to literally trash the masks used by another of my daughters who was going through her ‘iMa LeFtiSt’ phase then. She protested at first, or pretended to, but that didn’t last long once she experienced the benefits of breathing freely for the first time in over a year.
People in other places, particularly those run by leftist hypochondriacs, were needlessly made to suffer far worse, so I guess I should count my blessings. But I’ll never forget, and I’ll probably never forgive, although as a Christian I know I’m supposed to. Speaking of forgiving, reading an advanced copy of David Zweig’s new book on the subject of the decision-making process behind school closures, “An Abundance of Caution: American Schools, the Virus, and a Story of Bad Decisions,” is making it hard to want to even consider the prospect.
Zweig, a data-minded journalist, author, and cultural commentator whose past writings for the Atlantic, The New York Times, and other outlets, as well as his 2014 book on workplace dynamics titled “Invisibles: The Power of Anonymous Work in an Age of Relentless Self-Promotion” had little or nothing to do with politics, nevertheless found himself on a collision course with the restriction-loving political left when he began to research the actual evidence behind the often absurd Covid policies being imposed.
At first, I wondered how a book, nay a tome at more than 400 pages including endnotes, on the sole topic of the decision-making process behind school closures and restrictions during Covid could even be written. A pamphlet or a long article, sure, but a large book? However, it wasn’t long after diving in that I realized I was sorely mistaken, especially considering that the same justifications and ‘logic’ were used for similar measures imposed on much of the rest of society. Sadly, schools were just the proverbial canary in the coal mine.
Indeed, the story of how our medical and political establishment allowed a snowball to turn into an avalanche of devastating decisions is a critical one to document, not just for a sense of justice for what happened in the past but also to help ensure it never happens again. Thankfully, David Zweig was clearly more than up to the task.
The author began by chronicling perhaps the most mind-boggling fact of all when you consider the enormity of the decision to close schools and, when they eventually opened, smother the kids with face gags and other useless restrictions: Children were never a significant transmitter of the virus and the virus posed little to no danger to them. And the proof, which he documents thoroughly, was known as early as February 2020. From the beginning, there was never any excuse.
Instead of relying on actual data from actual cases at the time, the powers-that-be instead relied on flawed models, Zweig writes, “that didn’t account for information and behaviors in the real world.” They also entirely ignored evidence coming from Europe and other places, particularly Sweden, that quickly brought back schools or never closed them at all.
There was a strong psychological component of school closures that drifted into everything else that was done. According to this author, the “original sin” of the Covid era was the decision by both Democratic and Republican governors to close schools “before shutting down many other aspects of society.”
“It wrongly implied that schools, and children in particular, were the primary source of transmission, and, despite whatever verbal assurances given to the contrary, implied that children were at great risk,” he writes before arguing that this “action” “spoke louder than words” and would “prove to be intractable for many people.” It also paved the way for all the other insanity to come.
In a similar vein, the author argues, with evidence, that had China not locked down as hard and fast as it did, perhaps the rest of the world wouldn’t have either. Looking back, it’s beyond stunning that so many Western leaders at the time instinctively looked at China, totalitarian Communist China, and thought, ‘that’s the ticket!’ But here we are.
Interestingly, Zweig delves into how so many supposedly freedom-loving people in representative democracies fell for the nonsense hook, line, and sinker. By “setting the parameters of what was rational,” he writes, the public health powers-that-be “defined reality.” And the media, as he critiques thoroughly and in excruciating detail in the book, was more than happy to go along.
That’s really just the tip of the iceberg here. If you want to fully understand how the freest country on earth went absolutely mad when presented with a crisis, and how, given a basic understanding of evidentiary logic, things could have gone entirely the other way, you need to read this book.
As it turned out, everything, every closure, every mandate, every restriction, and even every ‘vaccine,’ did far more harm than good. It was all for nothing. ALL of it. No doubt, many, if not most, of the leaders during that era meant well, but their failure to take even the most basic data into account when making decisions should disqualify them from ever being in such a position again.
In a just society, all of them would be put on trial and held to account for the damage they caused. If that ever happens, Zweig’s devastating, meticulously researched account would be all the prosecution would need to obtain a conviction. And that’s probably the strongest endorsement I could possibly give.