NPIs

 Nothing brings out Bad Yglesias more than Covid Hot Takes. The fact that he's channeling Nate Silver, himself a fountain of Covid Hot Takes, isn't a promising start. His argument seems to be that things like masking and social distancing didn't work, but his argument is muddled, because he often points out that they did work. As he notes, the bans on large gatherings was a good idea, but we had a mess of rules and enforcement for things like masks and dining.

Then he says, and this is his hobby horse, that school closings were bad. How much of this is because he has a school age kid...I don't know. But the argument that banning large indoor gatherings was good, but schools should have been open is nonsensical. 

When we opened in the fall of 2020, it was with a LOT of trepidation and precautions. As a boarding school, we could effectively isolate large parts of the population - the boarders. We created "pods" of kids who could be together and we tested every person on campus every week. Many students were remote, as we had to teach in hybrid classes. Now, the broad point that this was "bad schooling" does, I think, hold water. We continue to see gaps and lags in student learning, especially incoming students. So even with a hybrid system, we saw learning loss. 

The solution to this was not to open schools, but to build into schooling an additional year for Generation Covid. Some students could navigate independent learning better than others, and maybe they wouldn't need or want that additional year, but you can't argue that banning large gatherings is good...and then argue for packing students into classrooms. Sure, the students would likely be fine if Covid broke out among them, but they would bring the disease home and the teachers would get sick. A lot of teachers are older, frankly, in many public schools. 

So, banning large gatherings is good to save lives, but lets reopen schools and if some teachers die, well...whatever.