There is no evidence that school closures could reduce the spread of COVID-19, a disease caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, according to a recent study.
“We do not find any evidence that school closures in Japan reduced the spread of COVID-19. Our null results suggest that policies on school closures should be reexamined given the potential negative consequences for children and parents,” the study reads.
School closures have been widely implemented across the world since the Spring of last year when the pandemic started.
The study pointed out that school closures have broad impacts, including learning loss, future earnings loss, deterioration of physical health and mental health, maltreatment, and lower maternal labor force participation, including health care workers. Furthermore, school closures would widen social and economic inequality and lead to even long-term macroeconomic damage.
“Accordingly, it is imperative to know whether the benefits of school closures outweigh these costs. Nonetheless, scholars have not reached a consensus on the degree of benefit, if any, to closing (or not reopening) schools,” the study reads.
The study said that about 20 articles claim school closures are effective in controlling the spread of COVID-19, while almost the same number of articles have the opposite conclusions.
The authors of the study argue one of the reasons is methodological.
The authors said many articles do not control for any other variables, while others include only a few control variables. Therefore, dozens of potential confounders that affect school closures and the number of cases—for example, the share of children in the population, medical preparedness, and the government’s fiscal situation—would bias estimates of the effect of school closures.
Also, it is challenging to disentangle the effect of school closures from those of other measures or factors such as season, economy, and weather.
Thus this study enacted causal inference methods, utilizing matching techniques to account for dozens of confounders. So municipalities the study analyzed are comparable except for school closure status; the difference between them should only be attributed to school closure status.
“Empirically, we find no evidence that school closures in Japan caused a significant reduction in the number of coronavirus cases,” the study concluded, suggesting that “policymakers should be cautious when considering similar policies in the future, especially given the substantial costs such policies can have for the well-being of both children and parents.”
School closures for COVID-19 have become a controversial issue due to the negative impact.
“One example is from Sweden, during the first wave in the spring of 2020, which affected Sweden quite strongly,” Kulldorff said, talking about his motherland. “But Sweden decided to keep daycare and schools open for all children ages 1 to 15. And there are 1.8 million such children who got through the first wave without vaccines, of course, without masks, without any sort of distancing in schools.
“If a child was sick, they were told to stay home. But that was basically it. And you know how many of those 1.8 million children died from COVID? Zero. Only a few hospitalizations. So this is not a risky disease for children.”
At the same time, CDC said vaccination is the leading preventative strategy to help kids safely return to school and has recommended universal indoor masking by all students, teachers, and visitors to K–12 schools, regardless of vaccination status.
