I scooped The Lancet & CDC by nine months
Per recently-found CDC study, the number of school closings increased 285 percent (!) in the months before official Covid. Nobody saw or talked about this paper, but they should.
In July of 2023, I published an exclusive article, stating that a “record number” of schools in America closed “due to illness” in the weeks and months before official Covid.
(“Flu Closings Galore Documented.” See link here.)
This weekend I decided to perform more Internet searches to see if I could find more schools or school systems that had closed between November 2019 and early March 2020. I did quickly find several more school systems that closed. However, I also found a paper on the very same subject that was produced by CDC researchers and published in the prestigious medical journal, The Lancet, in April of 2024 (nine months after my article).
According to this belatedly-discovered paper, far more schools and school systems closed due to student and staff absences than my article had estimated.
According to the April 2020 paper, 2,886 schools in America (approximately 2.4 percent of all U.S. schools) closed due to illness in the weeks and months before the lockdowns designed to “slow or stop spread” of the novel coronavirus.
In data I found eye-opening, the number of school closings in the pre-pandemic flu season of 2019-2020 increased by 285 percent over the mean number from the previous eight flu seasons.
From the flu season of 2011-2012 through the flu season of 2018-2019, an average of 749 schools closed each year prior to the flu season of 2019-2020.
In total, 5,995 schools had closed in the previous eight years. In 2019-2020, 48.14 percent of this figure occurred in just one 4-month period (November through the first week of March 2020) before “official” Covid.
Per the authors, the range of school closings each flu season was a low of 11 (in 2013-14) to 2,886 in 2019-2020.
As the authors note, the two flu seasons before the 2019-2020 flu season were also considered severe with the 2017-2018 flu season said to be one of the worst in 40 years.
However, the flu season of 2019-2020 produced 45.4 percent more school closings than the flu season of 2017-2018 and 50.9 percent more than the flu season of 2018-2019.
No ‘experts’ seem to have connected any possible dots …
I was also surprised (or actually not surprised) to learn that authors did not consider the possibility that Covid could have spread across the country in the weeks and months before the lockdowns of mid-March 2020.
As the authors note, the number of school closings (SCs) due to illness in a given year strongly correlate to outbreaks of Influenza Like Illness (ILI).
“We observed annual occurrences of ILI-SCs, which coincided with and were likely a result of widespread illness.”
According to my “early spread” hypothesis, if a (perhaps) novel virus was “spreading” across the country, one would expect to see a significant spike in school closings - which is exactly what happened in the fall and winter of 2019-2020.
The CDC school closing analysis (the first-ever of its kind, except for my citizen journalism) as well as contemporaneous media reports and weekly public health ILI surveillance reports further support the conclusion that the “flu season” of 2019-2020 was NOT normal, but instead produced far more symptomatic sick citizens than, perhaps, any previous flu season.
It should be noted that PCR tests were not administered to Americans prior to early March 2020, leaving open the possibility that some unknown percentage of the “extra” sick people in the 2019-2020 flu season could have been suffering from Covid-19.
For example, if 15 to 30 percent of the sick students and teachers who missed school due to illness in 2019-2020, in fact, had Covid, this would translate to many millions of “early” Covid patients.
It also goes without saying that if nearly 3,000 U.S. K-12 schools closed due to illness, that a respiratory virus must have been affecting large numbers of citizens who do not attend schools or work at schools.
Unfortunately, the study does not list all of the states where schools were closed due to illness (or school closings specified by each state), nor does the paper provide a break-down of when different schools were closed due to illness.
Per my earlier analysis, I identified at least 118 school systems or individual schools in at least 16 states that closed due to illness with school closings beginning much earlier than typical - in November 2019 - and lasting until the first week of March 2020 (right before the lockdowns when all schools were closed due to Covid).
Like my analysis, the CDC paper said the largest number of school closings occurred in January and early February 2020. CDC authors, like I have, also note there were “three waves” of illness in this prolonged, “severe” and “widespread” ILI season. (ILI percentages were at or above the expected baseline for a record 26 weeks in the Flu Season of 2019-2020).
From The Lancet paper:
“During the 2019-2020 season, ILI activity surpassed the national baseline in early November and was characterized by three peaks: the second of these, in early February coincided with the peak of ILI-SCs. (emphasis added by Bill Rice, Jr.)
(Note: Other flu seasons, like the severe flu season of 2017-2018, typically have just one “peak” of high ILI activity lasting five to six weeks.)
Per my research, a major and severe wave of ILI outbreaks occurred in numerous states across America in late December 2019, although some states had severe ILI outbreaks in early November. Since schools were already out due to Christmas holidays, this suggests even more schools would have closed if 100 percent of schools weren’t already closed.
Another point I made in my own analysis: Most schools closed when absences from illness exceeded 15 or 20 percent of the student population. (I found several examples of schools or school systems where 30 to 40+ percent of the student body and staff were “out sick” at the same time).
Unknown is the number of schools and school systems that had a large spike in ILI illnesses, but superintendents or principals chose to not close local schools. (This happened in my hometown of Troy, Alabama where large swaths of students became ill in January 2020, but local schools did not close).
That is, these unprecedented school-closing statistics probably don’t fully capture how many American were suffering from ILI/Covid symptoms prior to official Covid. (According to public health officials, the novel coronavirus did not begin to “spread” widely until the latter part of March 2020, when schools had already been closed).
When did millions of Americans experience “Covid symptoms?”
As I’ve pointed out in numerous articles, the number of Americans who were sick with Covid-like symptoms was massively larger in the months November 2019 through late February 2020 than in the spring months of April and May 2020.
The reason I didn’t know about this CDC study until this weekend is that the paper, apparently, generated no mainstream press coverage. (I could find no articles about the study and the study says it was cited or mentioned only 1 to 3 times).
It probably goes without saying that my original article on the same topic, also generated very little attention and no mainstream media coverage.
I still don’t understand why any analysis of a novel respiratory virus continues to ignore the undeniably large numbers of citizens who experienced symptoms associated with Covid-19.
*** (This data deserves to be widely shared, at least in my opinion.) ***
Other data from the CDC study published in The Lancet:
Authors used Internet searches from news sites, medical and public health sites and social media to compile lists of school closures, most of which were for two school days.
Authors used other sources to estimate the number of students and staff members who attend or work at the schools that closed.
For example, 1.29 million students and 82,812 staff members attend the 2,886 schools and/or school districts that shut down in 2019-2020. This compares to 901,000 students and 58,000 staff members affected by school closings in 2017-2018 (the next worse or largest flu season of the prior eight years.).
Authors also expressed school closings by “school-closing events” (which could involve multiple schools).
The average number of “school closing events” before the 2019-2020 flu season was 224. In 2019-2020, the number of school closing events was 627 - 2.8X larger.
***
The authors note that America has more than 100,000 K-12 schools.
From a Google search, Google AI states that America has “128,961 K-12 schools, according to EdWeek. This includes both public and private schools. Of these, 88,909 are pre-kindergarten, elementary, and middle schools, while 27,155 are secondary and high schools.
If 2,886 schools were closed due to illness in the weeks and months before official Covid, this would equate to 2.24 percent of American schools that closed due to illness.
Authors also included the number of school closings for the two years post-Covid, but these figures weren’t significant (as almost all schools were closed due to Covid for most of the 2020-2021 school year/flu seasons).
Still, for the record, 11 schools closed due to ILI (or Covid) in 2020-2021 and 224 in 2021-2022 (12.9X more schools closed in 2019-2020, “pre-Covid,” than two years later).
The data …
Year: # of school closings (# of school closing “events” through 2019-2020)
2011-12: 103 (32)
2012-13 383 (104)
2013-14: 11 (5)
2014-15: 308 (112)
2015-16: 40 (20)
2016-17: 1,292 - 14.5 percent of this column (231 SC events.)
2017-2018: 1,966 - 22.1 percent of this column (458 SC events.)
2018-2019: 1,912 - 21.5 percent of this column (429 SC events.)
2019-2020: 2,886 - 32.5 percent of this column ((627 SC events.)
Average school closings per year in 8 flu seasons before 2019-2020: 749.
2019-2020 school closings, increase from previous mean: + 2,137 (+ 285.3 percent).
School closings increased by 45.3 percent compared to 2017-2018 flu season.
School closings increased by 50.9 percent compared to 2018-2019.
Cumulative school closings in nine flu seasons through 2019-2020 season: 8,881
A note about the flu shots …
As the above school-closing data shows, major increases in the number of schools that closed due to ILI or “flu” can be observed beginning in the 2016-2017 flu season. The raw numbers of schools that closed each flu season were: 1,292, 1,966, 1,912 and 2,886 in 2019-2020.
If 50 percent of the nation’s citizens dutifully received their flu shots, the flu shot did not prevent ever-increasing numbers of school closings, including a massive spike in 2019-2020 just before Covid.
As I hope to explore in a future article, I wonder if the flu shot could actually cause large numbers of people to experience flu symptoms.
In Conclusion …
The CDC paper, published in The Lancet, confirms what this newsletter first reported two years ago - namely, for some reason, a massive and unprecedented number of schools and school systems closed in the weeks and months before “Covid” allegedly arrived in America.
While CDC authors and editors of The Lancet don’t find this information curious or significant, I continue to think this data strongly suggests that a novel virus was spreading across America months before the public health experts and mainstream media say was possible.
If this is true, the lockdowns could never have prevented virus spread and were unnecessary.
Also, if this is true, the “novel coronavirus” was not any more “deadly” than the normal flu (as no spike in deaths were observed) and, as such, nobody - especially healthy citizens under the age of 70 - needed to get an experimental “vaccine” to protect them from death.
The above data also suggests that public health officials were/are too incompetent to consider the possibility this virus had already spread across the country by mid-March 2020 and/or that some public health officials intentionally concealed evidence of “early spread.”
*** (Paid and free subscriptions are greatly appreciated, as well as one-time writer gratuities.) ***
More Early Spread Evidence:
Influenza-Like-Ilness (ILI) probably tells the tale of early spread (See link here).
Far more flu tests were given in 2019-2020 (See link here.)
Covid was spreading across U.S. in 2019 (See link here).
I asked for ‘early spread’ anecdotes and boy did I get them! (See link here.)
Early Spread Evidence in one Document (See link here).
Flu Closings Galore Documented (See link here).
Lancet Paper on School Closings through past years (See link here.)
Great job, Bill!
Not often we get a scoop confirmed, so you're right: celebrate with a victory lap.
I think the word “expert” gets overplayed. The word sounds as if it’s about people that know what they’re talking about. Except in most cases that’s incorrect. Take medicine for example, considered health experts yet can’t cure a thing. Listed by Google as the third leading killer of all Americans but really the first and called experts. I think they’ve tried to have us believe we are stupid but in reality they are like most of the straight A kids from school with no common sense. Great job Bill!