I entirely agree with Carl's take in this thread.

If the US prioritized properly - closing other transmission sources, investing in classroom adaptation, testing, data - we could find ways to do this safely. It's insane that that isn't happening. https://twitter.com/CT_Bergstrom/status/1319787678024355844

The choice parents, teachers, admins continue to face is not “are we able to establish conditions for a safe reopening.” It’s still “we can’t establish safer conditions; should we reopen anyway?” That is scandalous.

Policymakers could put schools first: designing reopening plans around getting schools open safely first, before reopening other less essential things. Instead we’ve seen nearly the opposite. Policymakers have focused on businesses, with schools an afterthought.

And rather than policymakers taking ownership of whether/how to open safely, they’ve left that to parents and school administrators.

But parents and school admins don’t have the means to set community/state/country-wide reopening priorities.

And other big tasks that could help get schools open safely - like the major testing and tracing programs at some universities, or new ventilation measures - have been ignored entirely. Adaptations to school operations have been woefully under resourced.

Even if you think school risks are exaggerated, it’s not enough to just open schools normally (hopefully with masks, at least) and say “your fears are overblown, get back in there.” Worried parents and teachers need some assurance.

That assurance could come from setting clear standards for safe operations, training to those standards, resourcing implementation of those standards, and orienting other reopening policies around meeting those standards. Then systematically collecting and analyzing safety data.

That would make schools substantially safer. It would give reassurance to the people who have to put themselves or their kids back into school that the risks are being managed rather than ignored. Virtually none of it has happened.

That’s what we should be debating. And that’s what we should be demanding from our politicians.

Instead, much of the recent public debate has veered toward blaming parents and teachers for their safety fears, rather than blaming the politicians who have failed to address those fears.

So let’s maybe stop with recriminations against people nervous about an unmanaged risk, and instead focus on the people who are failing to manage that risk?