White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany argued that parents should not let science stand in the way of them sending their kids back to school during a deadly pandemic. Seriously.

The coronavirus has killed 140,000 Americans and 3.5 million are infected as hospitals run out of beds for the sick and dying. But President Donald Trump is hell-bent on forcing kids to pack into classrooms across the nation, which would create a new breeding ground for the virus and cause it to spread even further. Not only are kids with underlying conditions at risk of contracting and dying from the virus, children who contract it could spread it to family members who could also die.

It’s a recipe for disaster, but McEnany urged parents to ignore health experts and science.

“When [Trump] says open, he means open in full, kids being able to attend each and every day in their school. The science should not stand in the way of this,” McEnany clearly stated.

She then argued that the “the science is on our side here and we encourage for localities and states to just simply follow the science, open our schools” after comparing our situation to that of other nations.

The problem is that other nations are able to open their schools because they effectively stopped the spread of the virus and reduced the number of new cases down to a trickle. The United States, on the other hand, is setting new case records daily.

McEnany then claimed that not attending school in person damages kids.

“It’s very damaging to our children,” she said. “There’s a lack of reporting of abuse, there’s mental depressions that are not addressed, suicidal ideations that are not addressed when students are not in school. Our schools are extremely important, they’re essential, and they must reopen.”

Here’s the video via Twitter:

The coronavirus will be even more damaging to kids if we force schools to reopen. Teachers and administrators are at risk of contracting and dying from the virus. And so would any substitute personnel who come in to take over. This is pure recklessness and McEnany ought to be ashamed of herself since she has a kid of her own. Would she feel confident about sending her own child to a school or daycare right now? Until she’s willing to sacrifice her own child, she should stop trying to force other parents to sacrifice theirs.

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