The Rhetoric of War, against China

Several days ago I heard a retired army general explain that the Trump administration had done a wondrous thing by changing the rhetoric towards China. No more Mr. Nice Guy. No more conciliation and reconciliation. We hated China, about as much as the American left hated Trump. And we would defame, demean, insult and offend them as much as we wanted.

Macho posturing, mixed with braggadocio, what could be wrong with that. Wasn’t China the sum of all evils in the world today? We would stand for our ideals and treat China the way they deserved to be treated.

So, top Trump administration officials were saying that we are going to make China pay, that we are not going to let them get away with anything, and that are going to teach them a lesson. Ask yourself to whom you use such rhetoric. Certainly not to your children, I trust.

As I have occasionally pointed out, such rhetoric will be considered by China to be a threat to face. The Chinese government will always respond forcefully to threats to face. It’s called saving face. And one should have expected them to respond forcefully when the Trump administration placed the CFO of Huawei under house arrest. It was a shot across China’s bow. Any policymaker who imagined that it would not elicit a counterattack is unworthy of his position.

If world affairs are a chessboard, China has made some interesting moves since the Trump administration started pretending to be tough on China. Which moves? Like the crackdown in Hong Kong, the end of negotiations with North Korea, threats to Taiwan, increased activity in the South China Sea, a lack of cooperation on the coronavirus and now a new massive trade deal with Iran.

On these matters we have normally placed our trust on David Goldman. After all, he had been part of a Trump administration task force on China, but had left it after he noticed that its leaders, people like Peter Navarro and Steve Bannon were so enthralled by their macho posturing that they had failed to consider China’s counter moves.

In Goldman’s words:

China last week signed a $400 billion, 30-year investment deal with Iran. American sanctions against Iran are effectively nullified. China’s state press declared, “As it stands, this deal will totally upend the prevailing geopolitical landscape in the West Asian region that has for so long been subject to US hegemony.”  As former Indian diplomat MK Bhadrakumar reports in Asia Times, Chinese state media declare that China will trade with Iran and other Central Asian currencies in its own currency, bypassing the dollar-based world banking system. U.S. leverage against Iran is gone. It was obvious for the past year that China might play the Iran card. I warned of this in August 2020.

The Biden administration now says it’s seeking Chinese help to revive the Iran nuclear deal. That sounds pathetic and defeatist, but the fact is that as long as China is willing to prop up Iran’s economy, there isn’t a damned thing we can do about it. This is payback for Washington’s attempts to stifle China’s dominance in 5G broadband by choking off the supply of high-end computer chips to China and similar measures. Trump and his team of China hawks, including Mike Pompeo and Peter Navarro, do not appear to have considered how China might outflank us. Now the Biden administration has been presented with a fait accompli and probably will come to terms with a Chinese diktat (supported by the Europeans and Russia).

As Goldman notes, this deal had been in the works for months now. When it was first announced, one reporter suggested that if we had halfway decent diplomatic relations with China, we might have had some influence on the deal. Yet, while we are trying to destroy Chinese businesses and announcing, in stentorian tones, that we are going to make China pay for what it has done, we have sacrificed our leverage. Note that China is trying to replace the dollar with its yuan in international transactions. It is very ominous indeed.

For a retired American general to laud the Trump administration rhetoric, to say nothing of its actions against Chinese companies, is seriously short sighted.

I recognize that many readers think that China is an evil empire and that it deserves what it gets. But, as an old Chinese proverb says, Be careful what you wish for, you might get it.

New York City, Up and Down

The New York state of mind is suffering from cognitive dissonance. On the one side, several news outlets have reported that residential real estate sales are roaring back. They are roaring back from a rather low base, but roaring back they are.

To throw a little cold water on that statistic, we suggest the real estate developers and their marketing divisions must be hawking the story, the better to keep rents and sale prices from collapsing completely.

I know several savvy New Yorkers who believe that the story is hype.

The New York Post reports this story.

NYC real estate froze at the start of the pandemic, but for the first time since March 2020, real-estate transactions have exceeded those of the same period last year. And it’s not just dirt-cheap purchases, either, according to a new report from New York-based brokerage Douglas Elliman today.

Brokers closed 50 more sales in the first quarter of 2021 than they did in 2020, narrowly beating pre-pandemic measures and officially marking a break from — if not the end of — COVID-related losses, according to the report.

And now for a brief glimpse of pessimism. Commercial real estate is still on life support-- and that is being nice about it. Office buildings are emptying out. People are not returning to work. Some are working from home. Others have followed the companies who have moved to the sunnier climes down South. 

I realize that optimism is the order of the day. I understand that Joe Biden’s supporters are cheerleading for a roaring recovery, one that will save the Democratic Party in the 2022 elections.

Zero Hedge has the sorry tale of the state of commercial New York real estate.

Savills said the amount of office space available in Manhattan is at a three-decade high. The report, released on Thursday, said the availability rate soared to 17.2% in the first quarter. The rise in the rate was primarily due to a massive surge in sublease space, which now stands at 22 million square feet, or 62% higher than 2019 levels. 

There’s more, though the story portrays the lower prices as a great opportunity for companies to lease new space on the cheap:

Savills said rents fell for the fifth consecutive quarter to around $76.27 a square foot, down 9% from a year earlier. These cheaper rents are creating a massive opportunity for companies who want to enter the city. 

Desperate landlords were offering generous concessions for long-term leases at newly constructed buildings: "Average tenant improvement allowances jumped 16% and free rent surged 17% to an average of 13.5 months. The tenant-friendly market is expected to last for at least the next 12 to 18 months," Savills said.

The Manhattan office market continues to struggle more than one year after the pandemic hit, which has emptied Manhattan's skyscrapers. And since most employees are still working from home, just around 24.21% of workers in the New York metropolitan area were back at their desks as of this week. 

24% were back at their desks. That means that 76% of the spaces were empty. This is not good news. Perhaps there’s more to it than Zoom meetings:

Even with the vaccine rollout now reaching 100 million Americans, companies are still opting for "hybrid" work as remote working dominates. 

When major tenants stop paying rent, things are not good:

As more proof the work environment is rapidly changing, major magazine publisher Conde Nast (who owns brands such as ARS Technica, GQ, Teen Vogue, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Vogue, Wired, among other popular magazines) is a major anchor tenant in the new World Trade Center, recently skipped out on rent as it asked for rent discounts and a reduction in square footage.

Other major tenants are trying to sublet massive amounts of office space:

Last month, JP Morgan was reportedly looking to sublet hundreds of thousands of square feet at 4 New York Plaza in the financial district and 5 Manhattan West in the Hudson Yards area. 

The latest and greatest development project, Hudson Yards is a “ghost town.”

To make matters worse, Hudson Yards, a massive complex on Manhattan's Far West Side with condos, office space, and retailers built over an enormous railroad yard had investors panic because the company refused to open its books. The combination of work-at-home and folks moving to suburbs has left Hudson Yards and other places across the borough a 'ghost town.' 

This all suggests that the virus pandemic has brought years of technological change to the work model that has possibly made companies more productive and cut costs as employees work from home or adopt a hybrid work model. Without office workers returning to the borough, there can't be a robust recovery in the near term. 

In other words, don’t hold your breath waiting for a recovery. Note that the article claims that it’s just the at-home work phenomena that is driving the office vacancy rate. If there is more to it, if people have simply left and gone to other parts of the country, perhaps employers like JP Morgan Chase want to sublet their office space in order to open up new satellites in other parts of the country.

Anyway, don’t count New York City back in just yet.

New Rules for a New America

Our culture is rapidly being revolutionized. Out with the old and in with the new. This has been happening for decades now, but it is currently taking over whatever portions of America it had left alone in the past.

According to Victor Davis Hanson, we are now living according to a different set of rules, or else, a different set of principles. (via Maggie’s Farm) Dare we say that they closely resemble Orwellian double speak.

For all the whining and wailing about our democracy, these new precepts are being imposed by an intellectual elite, by tech oligarchs, by corporate PR honchos and by the radical wing of the Democratic party. No one voted for it, and that is what makes it democratic. Got it?

So, in regard to the last post, the first new principle is that money has no intrinsic value. It is just fiat, created out of nothing, to be spent with wild abandon. This infantilizes the population, allowing them to think that Mama and Papa are going to foot the bill. It is the triumph of consumerism, produced by people who inveigh against consumerism.

Money is a construct. It can be created from thin air. Annual deficits and aggregate national debt no longer matter much.

While you are at it, forget the rule of law. The laws do not apply equally to everyone. Immigrants are not subject to the laws. Now are rioters and leftist insurrectionists.

Laws are not necessarily binding anymore. Joe Biden took an oath to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” But he has willfully rendered federal immigration laws null and void. Some rioters are prosecuted for violating federal laws, others not so much. Arrests, prosecutions, and trials are all fluid. Ideology governs when a law is still considered a law.

We now live in a country where different people play by different rules. We must discard the rule of law as a racist relic:

Racialism is now acceptable. We are defined first by our ethnicity or religion, and only secondarily — if at all — by an American commonality. The explicit exclusion of whites from college dorms, safe spaces, and federal aid programs is now noncontroversial. It is unspoken payback for perceived past sins, or a type of “good” racism. Falsely being called a racist makes one more guilty than falsely calling someone else a racist.

In a nice touch Hanson explains that we do not require illegal migrants to obey the law. The reason-- they are not part of the white supremacist cabal that produced a nation suffering from inequity.

The immigrant is mostly preferable to the citizen. The newcomer, unlike the host, is not stained by the sins of America’s founding and history. Most citizens currently must follow quarantine rules and social distancing, stay out of school and obey all the laws.

Yet those entering the United States illegally need not follow such apparently superfluous COVID-19 rules. Their children should be immediately schooled without worry of quarantine. Immigrants need not worry about their illegal entry or residence in America.

And then there is thought reform, cancel culture and what Hanson aptly calls the Twitter Reign of Terror. You thought that you were free to speak your mind and to think what you will. You were wrong, bunky. The ministry of truth will determine what is true and what is false. It will tell you what you are allowed to say and what you are not allowed to say.

McCarthyism is good. Destroying lives and careers for incorrect thoughts saves more lives and careers. Cancel culture and the Twitter Reign of Terror provide needed deterrence.

Now that Americans know they are one wrong word, act, or look away from losing their livelihoods, they are more careful and will behave in a more enlightened fashion. The social media guillotine is the humane, scientific tool of the woke.

Nicely said.

Is China Trembling?

Joe Biden has gotten the rhetoric down. The reality, not so much.

When presenting his massive infrastructure spending plan, Biden told us that it was going to help America to compete against China. It was a joke, of course. The plan enriches public sector employee unions and throws a blizzard of money at the green new deal, with large dollops designated for care and compassion. Ask yourself how much is designated for the teachers who have actively destroyed the minds of America's children by forcing schools to lock down during the pandemic?

I have occasionally noted that the Democratic Party is the Girl Party, and that means, it dislikes competitive enterprise and loves charitable giving. It never explains where the money is going to come from, but today’s Democrats believe in something called modern monetary theory. Therein you can print as much money as you want and never have to pay it back.

Famous last words. It’s bad enough that American politics are broken. Now the country is spending its way to hyperinflationary oblivion. 

David Goldman has examined the plan. He is not impressed. The sums designated for infrastructure are paltry compared with what China spends, and compared to what is needed. But, lots of money for home health care workers… there, that will help us to compete against the Middle Kingdom.

How about transportation infrastructure? At the least, we are sorely in need of new roads, bridges, even railroads.

Labeled an infrastructure package, it offers just $447 billion for transportation infrastructure over eight years. That’s less than a quarter of the most widely accepted estimates for the US infrastructure deficit.

The big money is going to underwrite the Nanny State:

Most of the $2.3 trillion will buy votes rather than infrastructure, including $400 billion for “elder and disability care,” $213 billion for “green and affordable homes,” $174 billion for electric vehicles, $137 billion for “school and childcare infrastructure,” $100 billion for “job training” and so forth.

It’s vote buying, all the way. As for research and development, there is precious little left for that:

It’s a smorgasbord for Democratic Party urban constituencies that leaves $180 billion for “R&D in tech of the future” and $300 billion in manufacturing subsidies as an afterthought.

Most R & D, Goldman explains, comes to us from corporations. Now, however, the Biden plan will siphon off corporate profits, the better to fund solar energy plants and windmills and babysitters:

Most incongruous of all is the accompanying corporate tax hike, to a 28% base rate from the present 21%. Corporations fund most of the R&D that turns into new products. That will suck $695 billion out of corporations, according to the Biden calculus, or three-and-a-half times as much as the $180 billion in additional  proposed R&D spending.

So, we are ensuring that China will take the lead in scientific research. Biden is preventing corporations to innovate but it is funding universities and instructing them to waste money in the war against the weather.

And that $180 billion will go mainly to universities, with an emphasis on climate research and other fluff. That’s $180 billion over eight years, or an average of $22.5 billion a year in new money. China’s National People’s Congress last year mandated $560 billion per year of funding for new technologies.

The cost of hiring R&D staff in China is a third to half the comparable cost in the US, so China’s tech spend is closer to $1 trillion a year in terms of purchasing power parity.

So, dollar for dollar, the Biden administration has given up on competing with China. It is trying to make us all comfortable while we watch history pass us by.

To restore federal R&D to the level that prevailed when the United States created the digital economy, it would have to spend each year the $180 billion that Biden proposes to ladle out over eight years.

As for why it costs so much to build infrastructure here, the reason lies in labor unions and bureaucrats. Think about it, we have more bureaucrats per capita than China. Or anywhere else, for that matter. Yet, these workers always vote Democratic and they will be rewarded for their loyalty and their inefficiency in the Biden infrastructure plan.

American infrastructure is more expensive than in any other country in the world, largely because entrenched political interest and construction trade unions crowd the public trough.

New York’s Second Avenue Subway extension cost $6 billion, or $2 billion a mile, the most expensive urban mass transit ever built. The average cost of underground subway lines outside the US is $350 million a mile, or a sixth of New York’s cost.

Boston’s “Big Dig” project, originally budgeted in 1998 for $7.2 billion in today’s inflation-adjusted equivalents, will cost $22 billion.

Goldman prefers regulatory reform, the kind that the Trump administration was advancing, but that is not a dim memory of a lost past.

Without comprehensive regulatory reform, Biden’s  $447 in transportation infrastructure spending will make barely a dent in America’s requirements. China meanwhile builds 10,000 kilometers of new highways and 4,000 kilometers of new rail lines a year.

Calling Biden's Bluff

Tom Friedman took the measure of the first high level meeting between Chinese officials and the top foreign policy people from the Biden administration and concluded that China does not respect us.

He remarked:

At last week’s Alaska meeting between America’s and China’s top diplomats, Chinese officials made it quite clear that they no longer fear our criticism, because they don’t respect us as they once did, and they don’t think the rest of the world does, either. Or as Yang Jiechi, China’s top foreign affairs policymaker, baldly told his U.S. counterparts: “The United States does not have the qualification … to speak to China from a position of strength.”

Of course, Friedman defaults to anti-Trumpery and affixes the blame to people who were not there. In truth, the Chinese were showing contempt for the Biden administration, led by man suffering from senile dementia, a man whose administration is being run by Kamala Harris and Susan Rice. What conclusion would you draw from the fact that Harris is taking calls with foreign leaders, while Biden stays in the cellar.

Then again, the Biden administration is the most diverse in American history. Is there a downside to diversity? 

Hiring to fill diversity quotas, which is hardly new in America, has produced an administration that is short on qualifications and long on looks. We all feel especially virtuous for having so much diversity in the cabinet and so many women in charge. Jen Psaki does not much care about the national debt because we have a female treasury secretary. We all understand that women are strong and empowered, so we feel very good about ourselves.

The problem is, however much self-esteem we gain for having a diverse cabinet, we would do better to ask how we look to the world. Do we look strong and empowered or do we look weak and decadent? Our thought leaders believe that diversity is our strength, but, what happens if our opponents see diversity as our weakness? After all, China does not give anyone any special advantages for filling a diversity quota. 

Meritocracy in China is sacred. The same is not the case here. We believe that granting college admissions on the grounds of merit produces inequity, and we can’t have that. 

We should stop asking whether we have reached peak diversity and ask ourselves how we are presenting ourselves to the world? We might believe that diversity is our strength, but that is manifestly untrue. In more pedestrian terms, it is a bluff. And, over in Alaska China just called our bluff. 

At the same time Russian president Putin is moving tanks to the border with Ukraine. Is he testing American resolve or is he showing that our straw man president is an empty headed empty suit surrounded by people who were hired to fill diversity quotas?

Why Mental Health Treatment Often Fails

In his last New York Times column covering the psycho world, Benedict Carey emphasizes a point that I have often made on this very blog. Every time you hear someone somewhere saying that someone should go into counseling, you must understand that most of the mental health treatment on offer in America today is largely ineffective. 

Carey explores why this is so, but one cannot help but observe that most treatments involve ingesting substances. However much talk therapy has been touted, much of it does not work very well. If it does the reason probably lies more in the abilities of individual practitioners than in their method. I remain persuaded that cognitive behavioral therapies are largely the most effective, and they are certainly pointing us in the right direction. But still, the quality of care for mental health issues does not live up to the promise. 

So, Carey explores a paradox. Scientific research into brain function has leaped ahead, but treatment remains inconsistent and simply not very good. If we follow the indications that are on offer from advice columns, seeing therein the suffering of patients and the psychobabble offered up by columnists, we might understand that the profession is handing out quantities of unadulterated bullshit. The surprise would be if any of it ever worked.

He begins:

On the one hand, the field attracted enormous scientific talent, and there were significant discoveries, particularly in elucidating levels of consciousness in brain injury patients who appear unresponsive; and in formulating the first persuasive hypothesis of a cause for schizophrenia, based in brain biology.

And on the other hand, the nation’s mental health has been getting worse and worse:

On the other hand, the science did little to improve the lives of the millions of people living with persistent mental distress. Almost every measure of our collective mental health — rates of suicide, anxiety, depression, addiction deaths, psychiatric prescription use — went the wrong direction, even as access to services expanded greatly.

Why is this so? Carey offers one answer-- there are so many different forms of care that it is nearly impossible to navigate the system:

… the mental health system, for all its caring professionals, is chaotic and extremely difficult to navigate. There are few systemwide standards, and vast and hidden differences in quality of care. Good luck finding an authoritative guide to navigating the full range of appropriate options.

Carey remarks:

Don’t take my word for it. In his forthcoming book, “Recovery: Healing the Crisis of Care in American Mental Health,” Dr. Thomas Insel, former director of the National Institute of Mental Health, writes: “The scientific progress in our field was stunning, but while we studied the risk factors for suicide, the death rate had climbed 33 percent. While we identified the neuroanatomy of addiction, overdose deaths had increased by threefold. While we mapped the genes for schizophrenia, people with this disease were still chronically unemployed and dying 20 years early.”

As for Prozac and the other SSRIs, while they have undoubtedly helped many people, their use entails risks. No one should have been selling them as a panacea, though that is what happened:

One answer to that last question came in the mid-2000s, when the Food and Drug Administration held a series of hearings on whether antidepressant drugs, like Paxil, Prozac and Zoloft, backfired in a small number of users, causing suicidal thinking and behavior.

The hearings were hair-raising. Hundreds of family members who had lost a loved one crowded the rooms, their anger and expectation sucking up most of the oxygen; and some of the parents, it was clear, knew at least as much about the drugs as the doctors.

By 2006, the F.D.A. had concluded that a so-called black-box warning on antidepressant drug labels was warranted, citing the suicide risk for children, adolescents and young adults. Many psychiatrists were dismayed by the decision, insisting it would discourage the use of valuable medications.

I will pass on commenting about psycho pharmacology. It is not my field. And yet, the message that people received from the media frenzy about Prozac was that biochemistry would solve all of their problems. Why then should they not resort to other chemical substances, especially when their neighborhood therapist was mewling about feeling their feelings:

There’s a reason that so many people use binge drinking, playing the lotto and runaway eating to support their mental health: because the effects are reliable. Because they don’t require a prescription. And because they’re available, right now.

As a coda I would note that the most effective treatments for addiction involve 12 Step programs. And they derive from religion, not from science. We also know, or we should know, that regularly attending religious services is largely beneficial for your mental health. As is aerobic conditioning and yoga. And the current pandemic has taught us that socializing does wonders for one’s mental health. Thinking that your goal in life should be individual autonomous independent self-actualization is a formula for trouble. 

Perhaps we are expecting science to do something that it is not designed to do.

In the meanwhile, we always enjoyed Benedict Carey’s columns. We do not know his next gig, but we wish him Godspeed.

Damaging the Minds of Minority Children

However difficult it is to quantify, the school closing policies implemented by blue city and state politicians will surely count among the worst decisions of the pandemic. Instigated by teachers’ unions, these policies have significantly damaged the minds of children, especially the minds of minority children.

As it happened, the parents of these children invariably vote for Democratic politicians. Thus, they must bear some responsibility for the damage caused to their children. If they could show as much vigor defending their children as they showed marching for George Floyd their children would have far better futures.

As of now, the open question remains-- how much of the damage is reversible? Teachers’ unions mumble something about resilience and explain that children will simply bounce back, cognitively speaking. I consider this somewhere between a pipe dream and an outright lie. The likelihood is that the damage done to these children will never be completely undone.

Jessica Dickler reports for CNBC  on one important aspect of the problem. (via Maggie’s Farm) Can virtual learning be an adequate substitute for classroom instruction? The answer is a resounding No:

After a year of school closings and distance learning amid the coronavirus crisis, more than half of public school K-12 teachers said the pandemic resulted in a "significant" learning loss for students, both academically and from a social-emotional standpoint, according to a report by Horace Mann.

Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also suggested that virtual learning "might present more risks than in-person instruction related to child and parental mental and emotional health and some health-supporting behaviors."

"The pandemic has taken a toll on our students from an educational perspective, but there are a lot of other impacts happening," said Kelly Ruwe, an education advocate for Horace Mann, as well as a former kindergarten teacher and a mother of three.

Beyond the cognitive deficits are emotional and social deficits. The teachers’ unions are unnecessarily traumatizing children, causing a significant uptick in cases of anxiety and depression. 

Dickler continues:

Nearly all — more than 97% — of educators reported seeing some learning loss in their students over the past year when compared with children in previous years, and a majority, or 57%, estimated their students are behind by more than three months in their social-emotional progress, Horace Mann found.

Some teachers suggested these setbacks could be addressed by adding on summer sessions or bringing teacher's aides into the classroom for one-on-one or small group instruction. Still, nearly one-third expected more students will need to repeat a grade.

Of course, teachers will do their best to remedy the situation. Summer sessions and special tutoring will surely be of some help. And yet, a third of these children will have to repeat a grade.

Around the world, countries that shut down schools are seeing the same problem:

A separate study by McKinsey & Company found similar results worldwide. The majority of teachers from eight different countries said that remote learning is a poor substitute for being back in the classroom.

The U.S. and Japan gave distance learning the harshest scores overall, with a majority of teachers ranking the effectiveness only slightly better than skipping school completely.

As for which children are suffering the most, the answer is-- poor children of color:

Economic status mattered, too. Educators in schools in areas with higher poverty found virtual classes to be especially ineffective, heightening concerns that Covid-19 exacerbated educational inequalities.

Other research also shows distance learning has caused a significant setback in achievement, particularly among Black and Hispanic students, as well as students with disabilities.

According to a survey of more than 1,100 public school teachers by education nonprofit DonorsChoose, students in low-income communities and minority students have been disproportionately impacted by the pandemic.

Teachers report that these students are more likely to be learning remotely currently, and more likely to not have had their school building open all year. 

When asked what the biggest obstacle to return to a "normal" education environment was, nearly half cited a widening gap between academically struggling and high-performing students.

While the country is consumed with fury over George Floyd and systemic racism the putatively  non-racist teachers unions are actively working to damage the educational prospects of poor minority children. 

Also addressing this issue is Rachel Currie, writing for the Independent Women’s Forum. She offers some further research into the consequences of school closures:

For starters, it has done serious—and in many cases permanent—damage to children’s academic prospects. The Stanford Center for Research on Education Outcomes has estimated that, during the spring of 2020 alone, students in 19 states and cities lost between 57 and 183 days of learning time in reading and between 136 and 232 days of learning time in math. Not surprisingly, school districts across America have witnessed a sharp spike in failing or near-failing grades—everywhere from Fairfax County, Virginia, to St. Paul, Minnesota, to Los Angeles and the Bay Area.

Currie addresses the horrifying political irony in this:

This gets to a profound irony of COVID school closures: They have been imposed and/or supported by the same people—namely, Democratic officials and union leaders—who constantly demand greater “equity” in American life. Yet school closures have made our society much less equitable, because they have disproportionately harmed poor kids.

Moreover, a year after COVID school closures first started, white students are much more likely than African-American or Hispanic students to be attending school in person. In a February NPR/Ipsos poll, 65 percent of Black parents and 57 percent of Hispanic parents said their children were still all remote, compared with only 38 percent of white parents.

Those numbers should concentrate the minds of progressives. So should the data on mental-health problems: school closures have contributed to a shocking increase in anxiety, depression, and suicidal thoughts among children, and particularly among teenagers.

“Almost a year into the pandemic,” Dr. Lee Beers, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, said on February 24th, “what began as a public-health emergency is turning into a mental-health crisis among our nation’s children and adolescents.”

Surely, she is correct in her assessment:

Indeed, it’s not hyperbole to say that prolonged COVID school closures may rank among the worst and most destructive policy decisions in modern American history.

“The fact that you’re going to have schools that are going to be closed for this entire school year and probably even into the fall is a national disgrace,” Florida Governor Ron DeSantis declared last month.

He was right.