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An Abundance of Caution

American Schools, the Virus, and a Story of Bad Decisions

Author David Zweig

Hardcover

$39.95 US

| $53.95 CAN

The MIT Press

On sale Apr 22, 2025 | 464 Pages | 9780262549158

Grades 9-12

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Nonfiction > Politics

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A searing indictment of the American public health, media, and political establishments’ decision-making process behind pandemic school closures.

An Abundance of Caution is a devastating account of the decision-making process behind one of the worst American policy failures in a century—the extended closures of public schools during the pandemic. In fascinating and meticulously reported detail, David Zweig shows how some of the most trusted members of society—from Pulitzer Prize–winning journalists to eminent health officials—repeatedly made fundamental errors in their assessment and presentation of evidence. As a result, for the first time in modern American history, millions of healthy children did not set foot in a classroom for more than a year.

Since the spring of 2020, many students in Europe had been learning in person. Even many peers at home—in private schools, and public schools in mostly “red” states and districts—were in class full time from fall 2020 onward. Whatever inequities that existed among American children before the pandemic, the selective school closures exacerbated them, disproportionately affecting the underprivileged. Deep mental, physical, and academic harms—among them, depression, anxiety, abuse, obesity, plummeting test scores, and rising drop-out rates—were endured for no discernible benefit. As Europe had shown very early, after they had sent kids back to class, there was never any evidence that long-term school closures, nor a host of interventions imposed on students when they were in classrooms, would reduce overall cases or deaths in any meaningful way.

The story of American schools during the pandemic serves as a prism through which to approach fundamental questions about why and how individuals, bureaucracies, governments, and societies act as they do in times of crisis and uncertainty. Ultimately, this book is not about COVID; it’s about a country ill-equipped to act sensibly under duress.

"An Abundance of Caution, by the journalist David Zweig, documents the poor evidentiary basis for the prolonged school closures and attendant follies such as masking requirements and social distancing. Mr. Zweig distinguished himself throughout the pandemic by his willingness to question the assumptions of self-identified 'Covid hawks'...By recounting his own experiences as a father of school-aged children trying in vain to convince his local school district to consider other options, Mr. Zweig movingly conveys the dumbfounded disillusionment many Americans experienced during the pandemic."
—The Wall Street Journal

“It is a scrupulously researched, painfully detailed examination of why extended school closures were so misguided and why it was so tough for public officials to course correct...While the education world is today full of handwringing about distrust in institutions, experts, and the media, Zweig’s damning account suggests this distrust is both understandable and hard-earned. As he makes all too clear, we’re dealing with the aftermath of long years during which public officials and experts failed abjectly, while the media championed destructive policies and ignored or belittled those who were asking about the emperor’s lack of clothes. The experience shattered the public’s already fragile trust in schools, experts, and media. Rebuilding that trust will be tough, absent an acknowledgment of what went so wrong. That makes Zweig’s magisterial contribution not just an overdue exercise in truth-telling but also, potentially, a crucial first step in that restorative journey.”
—Education Next

"Author David Zweig doesn’t want the catastrophic policy failure that caused this lasting damage to get memory-holed. In his new book An Abundance of Caution: American Schools, the Virus, and a Story of Bad Decisions, he set out to hold leaders and the media accountable."
—New York Post

"Five years after the first school closures, Zweig’s third book, An Abundance of Caution looks back on what he considers the questionable deliberations surrounding COVID at almost every level. While it takes the pandemic as its subject, Zweig notes that the book is about something much broader: 'a country ill-equipped to act sensibly under duress.'"
—The 74, America's Education News Source

David Zweig is the author of the novel Swimming Inside the Sun and the nonfiction book Invisibles. He has testified twice before Congress as an expert witness on American schools during the pandemic, and his investigative reporting on the pandemic has been cited in numerous congressional letters and a brief to the Supreme Court. Zweig’s journalism has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, New York, Wired, The Free Press, The Boston Globe, and, most often, his newsletter, Silent Lunch. He lives with his family in New York State.

David Zweig View titles by David Zweig

Preface
Introduction
1. Remote Learning While Flattening the Curve
2. GIGO
3. Red Dawn
4. More Assumptions
5. (Wrong) Lessons from the Past
6. Europe
7. The Media, Part I
8. It’s Good to Feel Like You’re Doing Something
9. Out of an Abundance of Caution
10. The Evidence from Daycares
11. Technological Solutionism
12. If Trump Is for It, Then We’re Against It
13. Politics and Tribalism
14. The Media, Part II
15. Risk Aversion, Groupthink, and Safetyism
16. The Media, Part III
17. The Worst of Both Worlds, Part I
18. Parents Advocate for Open Schools
19. Bad Incentives
20. Rights and Responsibilities
21. The Worst of Both Worlds, Part II
22. An Absence of Leadership
23. Institutional Failure and the Success of Empirical Studies
Conclusion
Epilogue
Notes