All good. Maybe I misunderstood the smart references
here and
here. I took them to mean that if you look at the correlation / change and don't detect the same cause, you couldn't possibly be looking at it while employing even a basic level of intelligence, it's just
believing something that defies logic and common sense (following on from Leroy's view). No bother either way.
I see where you're coming from. It's a shit situation all round and my detachment from that doesn't help convey a particularly useful tone. I come at this from a different place and do not remotely think the place I come at it from is at a good representation of the entire country, and I personally value the wide range of voices on the subject.
I agree with you that we're making things worse for the economy by keeping schools open, and I don't understand why they're completely off the table and subject to no debate whatsoever here, while they're closing them all over in freedom-loving US. I personally think the impact of closing primary schools on transmission would be absolutely minimal, but the impact of closing secondary schools would be significant (in line with the NI assessment). I don't think the impact of closing secondary schools would be that bad, personally, but I do think it would be very destructive for primary school kids. We know enough about underdeveloped literacy in early childhood that have lifelong effects that we should take incredibly seriously.
There are young kids in my extended family that benefited a lot from more time with their parents, their speech and reading came on massively. The parents were worried at first about social isolation as an only child but it's created a great learning environment and an amazing family bond. But there's others in my extended family who simply look like they've lost a year of school, a single parent with a newborn baby can't also be a teacher and the young son can't sit still in front of a screen - it was an unworkable situation from the outset, and he'll never get that back. He struggled at school already and there's legitimate concerns that will be a much, much bigger struggle in the years to come, just from a few months out.
So I'd leave primary schools open and secondary schools closed, but I'd accept the decision going either way with the public getting a say on that. I think it's really odd the public has had no say in it at all. So we can mostly agree there and I'll save this thread from any more of my verbosity.