was that we were so eager to reopen the economy with bars and restaurants that few people put much thought into what was coming in August with schools. Realistically, we had a trade-off to make between reopening leisure activities and reopening schools, but schools were going to be closed in June 2020 either way. If energy had been committed to getting good masks to teachers (N-95, which were basically impossible to find at that time) and students (KN-95, etc), ventilating classrooms, etc, a lot more schools could have gone back in-person. But an incredible number of people were caught off guard when July and August rolled around and COVID was still a thing. There was even a decent-sized wave in the south at that time, because they had opened up more during the summer.

That was my single biggest lesson learned: you have to make a prioritization list of which activities you think are most important in society. I don't view restaurants and bars as important as school, but they wound up getting higher priority because of poor planning.