Journalist and author David Zweig has written a disturbing account of how bad decisions by people in high places forced the closing of schools around the world during the COVID-19 pandemic, mostly at the behest of flawed computer “modeling” that did not and could not account for the myriad real-life factors that were in play.

The tragedy of shuttered schools played out primarily in the U.S., as saner heads prevailed in other countries and schools reopened in Europe after only a short period, if they closed at all, which in Sweden they did not. Credible evidence compiled in Sweden and elsewhere showed that children were at low risk from the disease and that significant transmission at school was not happening.

The first 100 pages of this meticulously researched and documented book were enough to convince this reviewer that there was likely more at work than mere “errors” in judgment, as a pattern emerged of U.S. politicians, the medical establishment, and the major news media disregarding what should have been clear indications that schools did not need to be kept closed. The mere fact that the teachers’ unions vehemently supported the closures should have provided a clue that officials were on the wrong path.

Zweig paints a detailed picture of how, despite convincing evidence that children were not at risk from COVID-19 and not likely to transmit it willy nilly to adults, flawed science and political motivations prevailed throughout the pandemic. The myth that children were at risk and posed a potentially lethal threat to adults won the day, and closing the schools was alleged to somehow mitigate these dangers.

Zweig explains, for example, that in 2020, the New York Times was “arguably the most influential media outlet in the country among the cultural elite,” impacting journalists and decision makers at other media outlets in particular. Essentially, the Times set the tone for the rest of the news media.

The author writes that a week before New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s May 1st, 2020 announcement that New York schools needed to remain shuttered in order to “keep students and educators safe,” the Times published a brief writeup of a call President Trump had with governors in which he suggested some schools should reopen. The only comment in the article on Trump’s suggestion was that it was “unbidden” and ran “counter to the advice of medical experts.” There was no mention of the fact that schools in Europe were reopening or that medical experts there had reached the same conclusion as Trump “and the opposite conclusion of the unnamed American experts the Times was referring to.”

Similarly, masking was ultimately promoted for everyone and even forced on very young children despite a lack of evidence that masks actually worked and despite Anthony Fauci’s initial warnings against masking.

Zweig writes: “Fauci, CDC officials, and other health authorities were aware, or should have been aware, of the prepandemic scientific literature that showed a lack of evidence of benefit of community masking. For them to recommend a change in guidance and say, with certainty, that this was an effective intervention was essentially fraud.”

The author laments the almost total blackout in the U.S. media of relevant information that would in any way cast doubt on the wisdom of school closures, lockdowns, and forced masking. This included a June 2020 meeting of EU education ministers from 22 countries that agreed there was “no indication that reopening” schools, particularly primary schools, “furthered the spread of COVID-19.” Interestingly, Zweig himself wrote two compelling pieces exposing important evidence the major media outlets refused to cover, and the only news outlet that agreed to print them was Wired magazine.

An Abundance of Caution drives home the reality of the extent of suffering the closing of schools caused to children, beginning with an increase in abuse. While there were exceptions among private schools, most U.S. students didn’t return to their classrooms for more than a year. Many children from lower income families “were no longer getting a subsidized or free lunch at school, and millions of parents observed their kids slowly withering from months of isolation ... A distressing number were disappearing from the system entirely.”

Countless others grew frustrated with online learning, and there were tales of lower income kids whose parents took them to fast-food restaurants to access the internet. Zweig writes that “one in five students never logged in or were sufficiently disconnected that they were deemed to essentially be truants....”

The author does look at other aspects of the pandemic, such as the rejection by public health leaders and the media of the theory that the virus had leaked from the lab in Wuhan, China. While not the author’s focus, it nonetheless paralleled the school closure mandate in that it relied on political consensus rather than scientific data.

A major focus of the establishment media and much of the medical establishment, as well as contentious Democrats, was on opposing anything President Trump and his Republican supporters did or proposed doing throughout his first term. Whatever position the president took on a pandemic-related issue, a vociferous line formed to oppose it.

After nearly five years of meticulous research, Zweig has done the American public an enormous favor. Rather than letting all the bad science and abject failures of the medical establishment and politicians fade into oblivion, he spells it all out in meticulous detail. It’s not a pretty picture, and it should infuriate all right-thinking people.

The horror of the pandemic, and the mistakes that could have been mitigated or prevented, should not be forgotten. Questions should be raised as to the true motives of the main players and decision makers in directing what was truly a national scandal. Was the main goal to thwart and discredit Trump? Was it, as some observers believe although not mentioned in Zweig’s book, to see how far populations could be pushed into submission?

We will likely never know, but Zweig has written a compelling and thought-provoking page turner that all Americans should read.

To read the entire book, go to Amazon or Thriftbooks to order!

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