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I agree with most of that but I think closing schools also has a very big impact on long term life opportunities especially if close to exams.
Missing 6 months of school could easily cause you to drop a grade or two in key subjects like Maths and English where not having the magic pass (old C at GCSE?) really holds you back for the rest of your career.
Also looking after secondary school kids while working isn't all that tricky. Primary is a problem.
jellybaby-
The pandemic is definitely having a big impact on a lot of people's long term life opportunities - about 1000 a day at the moment aren't going to have any at all unfortunately. To me this outweighs the issues above - should we sacrifice the lives of older people so young people have better long term life opportunities?
Educationally it is possible to make changes to allow for that, the problem is (again, sorry for sounding like a stuck record) that our incompetent government aren't capable of effectively delivering it and are ideologically opposed to modern educational techniques which actively improve opportunities, because they think education peaked in the 1950s. I used to work on a programme that raised GCSE attainment by 2.5 grades on average for pupils who took part - it was scrapped by Jeremy Hunt despite the possible ROI being incredible.
I agree with @Señor_Bear that something like this is the answer:
Lock the place down for 10 weeks and go on a massive vaccination program like a war effort.
I reckon that would be better for the economy in the long term too. But this would take decisive leadership and we don't have that.
Fox
I think originally not closing schools was about keeping the economy going - parents who have to look after kids all day can't/find it hard to work - and not upsetting Tory voters by putting them in that situation.
I don't think it was ever about science or public health. This government has been almost weirdly obsessed with keeping them open and now we're seeing the cost of that.