Organized interest groups such as teachers unions pushed junk science to justify keeping schools closed for far longer than necessary.  The negative affects of this are well documented, as many children are now behind their peers both educationally and in their social development.  Schools were also used to provide essential services to children in poor areas, such as providing them free breakfast and lunch.

When two authors wrote an article criticizing the decision to require social distancing of 6 feet at schools, which was used to further delay their reopening, Fauci flagged the article and sent it to the CDC Director.

The Epoch Times Reports–

“Dr. Anthony Fauci flagged an article in an email to the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), highlighting portions that said the CDC’s guidance to impose 6-foot social distancing in schools was not based on science.

Fauci, the longtime director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, sent a STAT News op-ed to Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the CDC’s director, on Feb. 20, 2021.

“You probably have already seen this. But just in case, you should be aware of it,” Fauci wrote.

Fauci highlighted several paragraphs from the article, penned by Dr. Vinay Prasad and political science professor Vladimir Kogan, including a line that says the social distancing guidance was “not supported by science.”

The authors wrote that the distancing recommendation seemed to be based on “decades-old research,” pointing to an analysis by experts published by the British Medical Journal.

In contrast with authorities in the United States and some other countries, the World Health Organization and other health bodies advised distancing of one meter, or about 3 feet.”

In 2021, even the notoriously liberal Brookings Institute was forced to acknowledge that ‘partisan politics’ and the influence of teachers unions had far more to do with when schools reopened after the Covid-19 pandemic than the actual severity of the pandemic.

Their study found that pandemic severity had no relationship to when schools reopened, and that the decision was instead made based on the share of Trump/Biden voters in the county and the collective bargaining agreements that school districts had with teachers.