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Originally Posted by ThePrince
I'll start by saying that in general, I am far more on the "woke" side when it comes to science and just trusting the experts. I'm not smart enough to understand the inner workings of every single health and science issue - we absolutely have to trust the people who are educated and trained in these subjects.
With that said, multiple people have asked for an example, and there are absolutely examples of the left doing what is described here and politicizing science. Biggest example I can think of is COVID lockdowns - once the pandemic died down a bit, if you were for opening things back up, you got destroyed for being a far right MAGA that hated science.
When you look at the data, I'm not sure there was a worse affect of the pandemic than what we've seen in education and children simply not at learning at the level they should be at. In the US, there was a clear gap between blue and red states, where blue states that prolonged lockdowns had worse effects on children's scores. But the lockdowns became so politicized (on both sides) that you couldn't have a serious conversation about the downstream affects of the lockdown. And IMO, this is a problem that will hurt us for at least a generation, as the current generation of children are simply a step below. This has also led to widening inequality as those that are less fortunate and didn't have the same resources to learn from home, hire a tutor, etc. were further left behind with prolonged lockdowns.
Again, I think what the far right has been doing regarding science and health is nothing short of disgusting, but to say the left is unblemished here when IMO they've done real damage to our society is also unfair.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/11/b...ng-losses.html |
That NY Times analysis is a bit simplistic. Other than in the few states that had strict rules one way or the other, there isn't huge correlation between the amount of virtual learning and how the state overall voted in the Presidential election. For instance, places like Georgia and West Virginia had a higher rate of virtual learning in 2020-21 than places like Michigan, Vermont, or Maine did.
And even ignoring that, there doesn't appear to be a huge correlation between virtual learning and achievement loss when you dig into the actual numbers. For example, that article shows the 10 states that lost the least reading achievement and then the 10 states that lost the most, suggesting that the top 10 states (because they're seemingly more conservative) benefited from more in-person learning. But in reality, the average rate of virtual learning in the top 10 states is actually higher than it is in the bottom 10 and the median rate is identical. And you can see it in the individual states too. Hawaii had essentially zero in-person learning in 2020-21 and they're #2 in reading. Meanwhile Florida and Nebraska had virtually zero remote or hybrid learning, and they're #44 and #47 respectively.
That matches most worldwide evidence which has shown that basically all education systems suffered, but it didn't heavily correlate with school closures. In fact, some data has shown a negative correlation between school closures and loss in PISA math scores (see image
here). And that's likely for several reasons:
1) People self-modified their behaviour in the face of risk. Even in "open for business" places like Florida or Sweden, youth still had markedly lower contact with friends, extended family, and extracurricular activities. This has a negative impact on mental health, well being, and ultimately academic achievement
2) Places that experienced longer closures tended to have lower rates of severe disease and death. So while fewer gaps in in-person learning likely did have a benefit, if the trade off for that was students seeing more loved ones experience severe disease and the stress that comes with that, then it's not necessarily a net benefit
The places that got it right prioritized keeping schools open while mitigating spread elsewhere. But examples of that in the US are few and far between. BC did it in Canada, where schools were only closed for about 2 months in the entire pandemic in April and May 2020. But even then, I'm not sure there's huge evidence that BC saw less loss in educational achievement than comparable jurisdictions with more closures.