“One death is too many,” one distressed teacher said at a school-committee meeting. I won’t argue with that. But physicians are trained to weigh the risks and benefits not just of treatment but also of nontreatment. To focus only on the downside of reopening is to ignore the significant risks of staying closed: mental illness, hunger, physical inactivity, undetected child abuse, the trauma that results from witnessing violence. Is one death from suicide too many? From head trauma caused by an abusive caregiver? From an accident that befalls an under-supervised preschooler?

In general, the risks of serious COVID-19–related illness for children appear to be very small—lower, in fact, than more familiar risks. I know my own children face a far greater chance of harm when I strap them into their car seats or bring them near a pool. We still drive. We still swim. The other concern is that young children without symptoms may spread the coronavirus to adults. But in places where testing capacity is strong and the overall rate of transmission is low—as it is in Somerville, according to the state health department—the risk of an infectious child being present in any given school is quite small, and communities can move forward.

When schools stay closed, the wrong things reopen. Most of Massachusetts, excluding Somerville, entered the third phase of its reopening in mid-July. While the debate raged on about how likely schoolchildren are to transmit the coronavirus, customers returned to casinos, gyms, and indoor restaurant tables. The trend in COVID-19 hospitalizations reversed its downward direction and began ticking upward about two weeks after. The resurgence of new cases, now partly subsided, was sad and predictable.