The COVID-19 moralizers are still at it, convinced they can get the virus to care that they think life should go back to what it was two years ago. But conditions in schools—as in hospitals—continue to show how futile and entitled that position is. (Looking at you, Emily Oster, David Leonhardt, Leana Wen.)

Week after week, we see scolding in the national media about how it’s bad for schools to close or go remote, while local reports make clear again and again that school leaders do not have a choice here—and that in many cases, keeping schools open is very different from educating students, as kids are sitting in crowded classrooms without anyone available to actually teach them. If we listen to students and teachers and administrators, we also hear about deep pain being felt in schools as yet another wave threatens to drown people after nearly two years of struggle.

“There is no way to unbreak everything the pandemic broke. You cannot discipline your way out of trauma. There is nothing that can make healing not take time,” Seth Lavin, a Chicago public school principal married to a teacher, with a child who recently recovered from COVID-19, writes in a must-read Sun-Times op-ed. That’s why efforts to just will the country and the schools back to “normal” immediately are destined to fail. “Our job is to be what children need. Their needs are different now. We have to be different, too.”

But schools and students and teachers and other staff aren’t being given that space, to keep going and come back together in a way that is possible for people right now, in this omicron surge, after the past two years.

On Monday, a teacher in Louisville, Kentucky, tweeted that her district “returned to in-person today because we were ‘ready.’ At 6:50, my students were texting me that they’d been at their bus stop freezing in 24° weather for 30 minutes asking if could I help. 24° and most of our kids don’t have coats. Called everyone I could think of.” She continued, “Turns out the bus left compound 45 minutes AFTER they were supposed to be picked up.  Got to school to find out I have no planning period bc we’re short-staffed, and we have no subs/ no district resource teachers ever come to our school.”

As a capper, “School day ended with an email that we only have 2 custodians for the night, and to please take out our own garbage and leave it in the hallway. I know if we sweep our room, they’ll appreciate it. No other cleaning will happen today in the classrooms.”

In Worcester, Massachusetts, school committee member Tracy O’Connell Novick reported on a student survey that found that the top two issues were mental health and COVID-19. “Covid is still one of the biggest fears I have when coming to school with my mom being a high-risk person,” one student said. 

That kind of stress is present in most schools now, and it’s definitely present in any school getting close to the decision to temporarily close or go remote—which many continue to be forced to do, as has been the case every week since the return from winter break.

Schools in Lewisville, Texas, outside of Dallas, are closing from Wednesday through Friday because they cannot remain open given staffing shortages. “We do not have enough staff members to cover the expected staff absences, despite our best efforts to find substitutes and coverage for classes. The numbers simply are not in our favor,” Interim Superintendent Gary Patterson said in an email to parents. The numbers: COVID-19 cases among middle school and high school students have increased by almost 500% in 10 days, and “Absences for on-campus staff are running between 7-800 daily, while district-wide staff absences have been over 900 and peaked at 1,048 last Friday. That is more than double the number we would expect during non-COVID years.” Not all of those absences are from COVID-19, but the combined effect is to make it impossible for schools to stay open—or even to come up with the staffing needed for remote learning.

That’s not the only Texas school district that’s been forced to close by staffing shortages. Last week, officials in the Liberty Hill school district described “experiencing historic temporary staffing shortages due to COVID and COVID-related illnesses,” while student attendance had dropped to 82% from a usual level of 96%.

The message from too many elites is to just … pretend nothing ever happened, except for the sense of relief that nothing is happening anymore. But thousands of people are still dying every day. Millions of people have lost loved ones. Remote school and virtual school and interruptions due to quarantining are not just “learning loss” problems that will be reflected on high-stakes standardized tests. They—or the underlying causes—are traumas. And you can’t just bury trauma and go on with your life and expect everything to go swimmingly, something that’s true of both individuals and the nation.