@no1marauder said
You're wrong and I sincerely hope that when the next pandemic comes along, authorities aren't as stupid as to keep open places where large groups of people are in close proximity for extended periods.
You seem to be engaging in self-delusion, cherry picking your opinion pieces but not reading the science. Did you read this tour-de-force article in Nature Medicine? I think I posted in some other thread on the subject (you did not read then either).
"After controlling for case rate trends before school start, state-level mitigation measures and community activity level, SARS-CoV-2 incidence rates were not statistically different in counties with in-person learning versus remote school modes in most regions of the United States... Schools can reopen for in-person learning without substantially increasing community case rates of SARS-CoV-2."
The biggest effect they found, in some regions of the south where there were no mask wearing or other mitigation strategies, schools remaining closed could account for 9-20 additional COVID cases out of 100,000.
That's the biggest effect. Results varying so strongly by region, and those results being the greatest magnitude where other mitigation strategies were ignored, strongly suggests that other mitigation strategies worked far, far better than school closures.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-021-01563-8