We warned from the start of COVID that school closures would do irreparable harm to children with no health or safety benefit, because it was clear early on in the pandemic that healthy children were at close to zero health risk.

We’ve also cited multiple studies documenting the major educational setbacks for American school children. A new report from McKinsey confirms “virtual instruction” was essentially worthless – here and across the globe.

Children in the poorest countries suffered the most. McKinsey estimates a massive $1.6 trillion annual global GDP loss by 2040. We think this substantially undercounts the societal losses because reductions in income are associated with losses in life expectancy.

Note: we strongly disagree with the report’s highly misleading title. It was government lockdown, not the virus itself, that did most of the damage. So we’ve corrected the title.