MAJOR THREAD: This Israel article is going to alter the debate about schools. It has a lot of useful information, but its framing, and its title (which is the only thing many will read) distorts reality

FIRST: Israel opened nearly EVERYTHING around the same time. Singling schools out is like seeing a packed highway and pointing to one car and saying "This traffic is all their fault!" https://twitter.com/davidzweig/status/1289630162665893888?s=20

SECOND: This misleading framing of singling out schools has become a bizarre and troubling trend of groupthink, by media and some scientists https://twitter.com/davidzweig/status/1290280734813384704?s=20

THIRD: Misleading framing exhibit #2 https://twitter.com/davidzweig/status/1290293865446957057?s=20

FOURTH: (Back to Israel!) Many students *arrived* at school already infected and symptomatic. This was a community outbreak, not necessarily one that emanated from schools https://twitter.com/NahasNewman/status/1290301747928367104?s=20

FIFTH: As @NahasNewman has pointed out, there were ZERO hospitalizations of infected students or staff. This is such an important detail that gets lost amid the hysteria. Risks to young people, and most adults, from C19 appear to be exceedingly low https://eurosurveillance.org/content/10.2807/1560-7917.ES.2020.25.29.2001352#html_fulltext

SIXTH: Why are we treating the US as a monolith? The positivity rate in NY has been ~1% for around two months. Let's treat each state or, better, each region as its own entity

SEVENTH: The article *does* mention important factors that likely contributed to school spread, such as poor ventilation, jacked up AC, no masks or distancing of any kind. But this info gets buried. The average person will glance at the title and be misled

EIGHTH: All schools in the US are implementing some form of mitigation measures, often a cornucopia, including extreme distancing, masks, ventilation, reduced population, etc, that schools in Israel did not do. But the takeaway will simply be "don't open schools, period."

NINTH: The school "outbreak" was with adolescents. The preponderance of evidence from around the world suggests that young children are *not* drivers of transmission. They should be back in school, full time. https://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/146/2/e2020004879

TENTH: Swedish lower schools were open for the entirety of the pandemic and there is zero evidence of a mass of outbreaks emanating from them https://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/contentassets/c1b78bffbfde4a7899eb0d8ffdb57b09/covid-19-school-aged-children.pdf

ELEVENTH: Despite lower schools being open during the country's peak of infectivity, Swedish teachers were at no greater risk than other professionals https://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/contentassets/5e248b82cc284971a1c5fd922e7770f8/forekomst-covid-19-olika-yrkesgrupper.pdf

END: US is not a monolith. Young children are unlikely drivers of transmission. Teachers not at greater risk (but let vulnerable ones work from home). Schools are essential. If community rate is high then *everything* else should shut down first before schools are closed