A close friend of mine only knows what he hears on CNN.

And so far as I can tell, according to him, the death rate of COVID-19 is somewhere between 108 and 112%.

Hence, the only way to fight the virus: No one move.

For maybe half a year.

Then we all get up, the music starts again, and it’s around the chairs we go.

Funnily enough, on Thursday, CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield presented a shocking clash to my friend’s best advice.

As reported by The Daily Wire, Robert said K-12 schools should actually remain open.

And why? Because, in his view, houses of education are some of the “safest places” for kids to be.

In fact, he asserted, efforts to close them are nothing but an “emotional response.”

Here’s how Redfield reckoned:

“Today, there’s extensive data that we have—we’ve gathered over the last two to three months—that confirm that K-12 schools can operate with face-to-face learning and they can do it safely and they can do it responsibly. The infections that we’ve identified in schools when they’ve been evaluated were not acquired in schools. They were actually acquired in the community and in the household.”

CDC Director Robert Redfield pointing out the obvious that triggers teachers unions, which is "[t]ere is extensive data" that "confirm[s]…K-12 schools can operate with face-to-face learning and they can do it safely and they can do it responsibly." pic.twitter.com/o4nMS81Axp

— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) November 19, 2020

And check this out — the biggest problem isn’t anything to do with publicly shared space:

“Today, as Dr. Birx said, our big threat for transmission is not the public square, it’s small family gatherings, family gatherings where people become more comfortable, they remove their face-mask when they get together and it’s this silent epidemic that begins to transmit.”

School’s A-Okay:

“[I]t’s not interschool transmission. The truth is, for kids K-12, one of the safest places they can be, from our perspective, is to remain in school, and it’s really important that following the data, making sure we don’t make emotional decisions about what to close and what not to close, and I’m here to say clearly the data strongly supports that K-12 schools—as well as institutes of higher learning—really are not where we’re having our challenges.”

It’s good news — in my opinion, school kids being quarantined is terrible for their emotional health. Children and teens are made to be running around, hanging out, socializing and trying to look cool.

That’s also, from my observation, what adults want to do, too.

Either way, putting kids in cages — even if it’s their own house — can’t be good for ’em.

Dr. Rob put a point on it:

“[I]t would be counterproductive from my point of view, from a public health point of view, just in containing the epidemic, if there was an emotional response, to say, ‘Let’s close the schools.’”

Keep it comin’, doctor.

Meanwhile, “an emotional response” seems to be suiting many folks just fine.

Speaking of emotion, see my May article, “Sleepless and Sea-Addled: Thanks to California’s Closure, Last Month Saw a Year’s Worth of Suicides.”

As I covered at the time, a San Francisco physician lamented the effects of the shut down:

“We’ve never seen (suicide) numbers like this, in such a short period of time. I mean, we’ve seen a year’s worth of suicide attempts in the last four weeks.”

Last century, we had the Great Depression. Now we’re having a different kind:

[For a different perspective on popular prevention, dive deeper into doubts and disguises via my colleague Michael Thau’s “Sorry, Wearing Masks Is Anything but Harmless. Here are 5 Reasons Why“].

Rather than fighting the Wuhan Flu with feelings — and along the way, I hope, protecting the feelings of those who’d otherwise be mired in malaise — may we find a path back to how things used to be — what we used to call life, liberty, and happiness.

Ya know — that thing we called America.

In that place, kids go to school.

Of course, given our present political peculiarity, much of the school day may be spent learning how the U.S. stinks.

But one step at a time — maybe let’s get the youngsters back if it’s safe, then we can figure out what the heck’s going on while they’re there.

-ALEX

See more pieces from me:

Bored of Education: Illinois Proposes New Guidelines to Woke Up the State’s Teachers

We Don’t Need No Edgy Education: Harvard Petition Fights to Keep Trump Officials Off Campus

Prepping for More Lockdowns? If You’re in Florida or Texas, There’s No Need

Find all my RedState work here.

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