Child-maskers said it over and over – the masks would keep schools open. But now the data is in from Burbio for the 500 biggest school districts in the country and it shows precisely the opposite: it was the districts with mask mandates that were much more likely too close.

Overall, among the country’s 500 biggest school districts, schools with mask mandates were closed or remote for 3.15% of total student-learning days in January and February, more than four times the 0.76% experienced in mask-optional districts.

We’re not saying mask mandates cause school closures – the correlation is probably because the driver of both mask mandates and school closures was liberal politics, not COVID. But can we please retire the “we need masks to keep schools open” canard, please?

Alas, probably not. This from a Sunday New York Times editorial: “The risk of serious illness and hospitalization from Covid in children is extremely low, and yet the costs of unmasking, LARGELY IN THE NAME OF SYMBOLISM, are not entirely fictional (emphasis added). The benefits of removing needless masks covering kids faces for seven hours a day are “symbolic?” We give up!