How will Democrats respond? Last week, former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley delivered a speech in Charleston announcing her presidential campaign. At the end of her speech, she briefly addressed education: “In the America I see, every child gets a world-class education, because every parent gets to pick their child’s school. …

Why is this so hard to understand? Last night, President Joe Biden began his State of the Union Speech with some words about the pandemic: Two years ago, COVID had shut down our businesses, closed our schools, and robbed us of so much. Today, COVID no longer controls our lives. It was surprising to hear Biden blame…

While the United States struggles to discuss its lengthy school closures, Germany confronts past errors. About a week ago, German health minister Karl Lauterbach — a Covid-cautious Social Democrat who engages with Eric Ding on social media and called for lengthy school closures as an MP in 2020 — did something that would shock Americans used to politicians digging in their heels: he acknowledged a…

Germany’s health minister is latest official to admit school closures were a “mistake.” German Health Minister Karl Lauterbach is not someone who could be accused of minimizing the danger of Covid — he engages with self-described Covid alarmist Dr. Eric Ding on Twitter, attacked fall 2022 Oktoberfest planners for not mandating rapid tests, and supported public transport mask mandates into 2023. Nonetheless…

On vaccines, testing, and travel, Zients made some big mistakes. President Biden has tapped management consultant and multi-millionaire Jeff Zients as his next chief of staff. According to CNN, “Biden was impressed with his job as the coronavirus response coordinator” and that played a major role in his selection. Praise for Zients’ work in that role is confusing, though, because…

Potential harms were clearly articulated. On March 12, 2020, as pandemic panic was sweeping across the globe, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) tweeted a technical report entitled “Considerations relating to social distancing measures in response to the COVID-19 epidemic.” The report proposed a variety of social distancing measures that European…

Forgiving a friend is different than forgiving Gavin Newsom. Brown University Economist Emily Oster — who I deeply respect — has a piece out this morning encouraging forgiveness for actions and words over the past few years: “a pandemic amnesty.” And I do think Oster is right that, between friends and loved ones, we should strongly consider forgiving pandemic…

From the Center for American Progress to the DNC to social media activists to Joe Biden’s presidential campaign, the message was that it was unsafe to reopen schools. As a social democrat — I support Medicare for All, child benefit payments, social housing, and all the important elements of a robust welfare state — it gives me no joy to say this, but the Democratic Party decided to make political hay out of reopening schools in summer 2020…

Central Falls, Rhode Island and Clayton County, Georgia communicated with parents in very different ways. As cases and deaths tragically rose in 2020, many American parents were understandably scared about the risk their children faced from Covid-19. Turn on the TV? They saw this: Trying to relax with some funny cat videos on YouTube? They were likely served advertisements like this one — extreme…