Member-only story
Reopening Schools Will Turn Our Children Into Lab Rats
Our kids will be the unwitting participants in the largest government study in US history.
Introduction
This fall, millions of school children across the country will be the unwitting, and probably unwilling, participants in the largest government health study in the history of the United States.
Over the past few weeks, the stories of how to reopen schools, if they even do open, has been dominating the headlines across all major media outlets.
And for good reason, too.
The total number of children in grades 1–12 is over 56 million, most of whom have been cooped up at home since the spring lockdown. And while states have been gradually reopening their economies over the summer with varying levels of success, apparently no one thought to plan ahead for the time when 17% of the entire US population will congregate on known locations at the same time.
What will be the impact on sending kids back to school?
No one knows.
It will take sending our kids back to school to actually find out.
Much of [the data] was generated at a time when children were caught up in the topsy-turvy world of…