Immediately after President Biden’s inauguration, CDC director Rochelle Walensky told reporters,
The White House immediately (and preposterously) distanced itself from this statement, claiming that the CDC director had spoken “in her personal capacity” on a White House press teleconference. And the CDC later knuckled under to political pressure from malingering teachers unions, aiming for the unambitious goal of just one-day-a-week in-person schooling at 50% of schools.
But today, finally, the CDC has made complete school reopening easier by other means. Its new recommendation for 3-foot instead of 6-foot social distancing is essentially an acknowledgment of what the science has been telling us for months now: Schools are not fertile ground for the coronavirus to spread. All data confirm this, and some studies even suggest that you are less likely to spread or contract the coronavirus in a school than you are in any other setting.
This new reduced 3-foot requirement reduces the expense that schools must incur in the course of reopening for next fall. It increases the likelihood that schools can be completely reopened at least by next fall, over union objections, wherever there is political will to make it happen.
Anyone who has children understands that the 6-foot distancing business was never realistic. It’s hard enough to get adults to observe it with any consistency. You will inevitably walk past other people in almost any context where there are two or three people gathered indoors. For example, did you hold a door for someone? You probably came closer than 6 feet.
As for children, maybe you can get students to wear masks properly about 90% of the time, if you’re lucky. But on the playground, they’re going to be closer than 6 feet multiple times in a 15-minute period. In fact, you’re going to see lots of zero-distance physical contact. I see it every time I pick up my children or volunteer to supervise recess at their Catholic school — a completely in-person school with zero confirmed in-school coronavirus transmissions, by the way. Masks slip, children continue to make physical contact, and no one gets the virus.
It’s a shame that Biden still lacks the courage to shove off the unions and remove the last federally endorsed excuses impeding full school reopenings. But at least the CDC has found one excuse it could remove in order to make reopening easier.
