As the number of adults with long COVID has led to the labor shortage, the number of kids with long COVID has led to a student shortage. There's been plenty of coverage about "chronic absenteeism" in US schools. But this is not just an American problem. It is global:
In the US, students have been missing class far more often in recent years. Some states are worse than others. In Alaska, about half of all students are missing 1 out of every 10 school days
For the country as a whole, the number of kids defined as "chronically absent" has doubled since before the pandemic:
It seems rather obvious that this is caused by COVID, but the press is seemingly aligned in trying to obscure this. Take this vox article where they cite a myriad of reasons, including the ever popular post-2020 euphemism "illness"
I'm sure other factors play some role, but how could the transportation and social services systems change so dramatically that it prevented kids from going to school not just in every American state, but most of the developed world?
Japan:
The UK:
Switzerland:
Belgium:
Was it the lockdowns? Well then, how do you explain Sweden? The poster child of avoiding pandemic closures
Canada:
It's estimated that about 6 million kids in the US alone currently have some degree of long COVID:
According to the CDC, there are about 3x more adults with long COVID than there are kids with it. But that's been enough to have an impact on the labor force. Millions of Americans are currently out of work because of a COVID disability:
Most kids don't work in developed economies. Instead they go to school. So, if millions of them are sick, you wouldn't expect to see that impact on the labor force, but you would expect to see it in school attendance. And, as outlined here, that's exactly what we're seeing
If school attendance rates improve, that might be a sign that long COVID is gradually disappearing as a problem. But if it's not, and if it remains a global phenomenon, I think you need a better excuse than transportation
People have responded to my thread with observations from other countries I did not mention: Norway, Ireland, New Zealand, the Netherlands, etc. I guess the better question is: where is this not occurring?
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