On those school closures

Much touted in the usual sites is how test scores fell when school was out, school being out due a plague going on and stuff. Is (aptly-named) "HotAir" the best place we can get answers?

Against such gaseous opportunists, @julia_doubleday yesterday poasted: COVID causes cognitive damage, we’ve known it for years, and while outlets like WaPo blamed dropping scores on “lockdown” with zero evidence, the kids continued to get reinfected. Winchell Chung has repoasted that to his @nyrath account.

Julia Marie added the rhetorical flourish / tantrum How much worse is this gonna have to get, above which I'm hoping to rise, because that stuff is obnoxious. More: these flourishes hint that the preceding take is going to be a hot steamy smelly one.

Anyway: I am not denying that Long Covid has neural effects. Part of the ongoing Kennedy controversy is that the vaccine has effects. Think what the actual virus could do.

As for those test scores - some thought might further go toward the Floyd effect, where we are simply gliding over such discipline upon such students as, shall we say, take up more resources. So their grades suffered. On the plus side, the closures kept the more-vulnerable students away from their bullies who, as noted, simultaneously weren't being disciplined. It's been noted that suicide-rates fell. Assuming that deep-depressives' grades suffer, if they remained alive during that time this - also - stands to lower the average test scores. But at least they lived.

@julia_doubleday and the rest of the HECKIN' LERV SCIENCE crowd might, in any case, ask how come Florida's tests didn't decline. Floridan children should have caught more Covid and, thereby, lost more points than (say) Los Angeles children.

DeSantis, I think, falsifies @julia_doubleday's thesis. With much more than "zero" evidence.

UPDATE 8:40 PM MST: Which is not to say I'm supporting DeSantis. He's antivaccine, not just antimandate.