White House Press Secretary Says Science Won't 'Stand In The Way' Of Reopening Schools

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany defended President Donald Trump’s insistence that schools reopen in the fall, saying Thursday that scientific findings about COVID-19 won’t “stand in the way” of resuming in-person instruction.

“The President has said unmistakably that he wants schools to open ... and when he says ‘open’ he means open and full, kids being able to attend each and every day at their school,” McEnany said at a press briefing. “The science should not stand in the way of this.”

It was a shocking moment. McEnany responded to criticism of her remarks on Twitter, pointing to other statements she made at the briefing and accusing the media of bias. But her boss’s record on the subject is clear: Trump has repeatedly dismissed the science around the coronavirus by pushing unfounded treatments, downplaying the need for protective masks and characterising it as a hoax. He’s now pushing for all US schools to resume in-person lessons soon despite cases surging across the country.

Vice President Mike Pence said essentially the same thing earlier this week: “We don’t want CDC guidance to be a reason why people don’t reopen their schools.”

Public health experts, meanwhile, are urging him to consider the science above all else. Dr Anthony Fauci, the top infectious disease official who has sparred with Trump in recent days, has said the decision should be left up to local officials and be based on how bad the outbreak is in their school districts. The Trump administration, for its part, reportedly shut down a document from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that centered on developing clear and strict reopening guidelines on a state-by-state basis.

Bizarrely, McEnany defended Trump by pointed to schools reopening in countries that are light-years ahead of the US in terms of slowing the pandemic.

“Of course we can do it,” she said of reopening all schools. “Everyone else in the Western world, our peer nations, are doing it. We are the outlier here.”

The US is an outlier, but not in the way she suggested. The US has repeatedly beaten its single-day record of new coronavirus cases in recent weeks, recording its second highest ever total of 67,000 new infections on Wednesday. Another tally shows the US creeping up to the top spot in an analysis of coronavirus deaths per 100,000 people, making the US one of the deadliest places on Earth for a disease other developed nations have eradicated.

McEnany then said the science was “on our side” for reopening schools because “the risk of critical illness from COVID is far less for children than that of seasonal flu.”

While the science so far suggests children are far less likely to die or fall seriously ill from the coronavirus, they are no less likely than an adult to infect others, putting their educators, their families and anyone with compounding medical conditions in harm’s way.