Joe Biden was elected president on the basis that, unlike the guy he replaced, he would “listen to science” and take the country back to a reality-based approach to tackling the coronavirus pandemic. Yet fifty days into his term, the United States continues to exist in an alternate reality when it comes to the virus, something that’s maybe most clear and urgent when it comes to the issue of school reopening.

The Biden administration is currently pushing for most K-12 schools to reopen by his first hundred days, the president recently assuring a young mother and her daughter in front of millions of Americans that children rarely get the virus and can’t spread it to their parents. A number of Democratic governments are already making a start on this, such as California, which approved reopening last week; Massachusetts, which is making all of its schools restart in-person classes over the course of April; and New York City, which is reopening high schools later this month. Places like Oakland and Los Angeles have seen parents protest ongoing closures and attack the teachers unions resisting hasty reopening, with some demanding their government “End Oakland Teacher Supremacy” and insisting that the reluctance to return to the physical classroom “Kills Kids.”

This push has been backed by the US government’s top scientific voices. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention declared in February that in-person schooling is safe under certain conditions, and Dr Anthony Fauci, the country’s discredited top infectious disease expert, recently affirmed that Congress’s passage of the $1.9 trillion relief bill means “we would get most of the children back to school in a very reasonably short period of time.” Even Scientific American, so outraged that Trump “rejects evidence and science” it endorsed a presidential candidate for the first time in its 175-year history, claimed this month the risk of spread among young kids in school is low.