The CDC’s latest guidance on school re-opening came far too late, leaving students and parents in the lurch as the school year dragged on with seemingly no chance for a lot of students to be able to return to schools. The blame for these extended closures lays squarely at the feet of the teachers unions, who fought like hell to keep schools closed and only did an about-face on the issue here at the end of the year.

That latest CDC guidance (and indeed every step they’ve taken and every statement they’ve made on schools throughout the pandemic) is now suspect, however. As it turns out, not only did the unions convince the CDC to advise that schools slow-walk their re-openings, but as it turns out the latest talking points are practically verbatim the talking points the unions gave them.

HUGE: AFT’s @rweingarten tells CSPAN the Biden Admin “asked for language” they could use in the CDC’s guidance on school re-openings (which was used "nearly verbatim").

"They asked us for language and we gave them language when they asked for it." pic.twitter.com/CdYXpL9htu

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) May 18, 2021

So now we know that the American Federation of Teachers, and probably the other unions as well, have been working with Democrats to influence the supposedly science-based organizations coordinating our COVID-19 policy. While we know that kids catch and spread the virus at a significantly lower rate than adults (lower to the point of it being highly unlikely), and while we know that hard surface transmission doesn’t really happen, we still faced schools and school districts shutting down for the year – many of them still being closed. Despite there being now plenty of evidence suggesting there have been few if any school-based outbreaks in the places that have opened, the fear pushed by the teachers unions kept schools closed.

This, ultimately, hurts both the Biden administration and the teachers unions. Because the unions are admitting this, and because the Biden administration is now getting credit for it, angry parents and suffering students now know who was responsible for prolonging this crisis.

Students have lost so much this year that we will likely see evidence of it in school data for years to come. The academic losses are not the only ones we’ll see, though. There’s still the matter of social and emotional development being delayed, and underreported child abuse as a result of schools not being able to see students and identify signs of abuse. All of this now made worse by the hesitation of the Biden administration’s CDC, which has been a politically-driven agency focused on catering to panic mongers’ fears rather than science.

And because the American voter usually puts the blame on the current guy in charge, it doesn’t matter that school closures happened under Donald Trump. Joe Biden didn’t act fast enough when he came into office and he will take the blame for it.

The CDC isn’t acting based on science. They’re reacting to political influences, and that has disastrous implications going forward. And if they are getting their talking points from groups like teachers unions, then that does not bode well for anyone at all.

After all, no one cares about your kids less than teachers unions.