“Truth is always the strongest argument.”

Sophocles

I have created and maintained the following charts since school began in late August 2021. The sole data source for all of these charts is the “Bucks County COVID Map”, which tracks the total # of COVID cases over the last 7 days for each and every Bucks County municipality. What I have done is created a spreadsheet that organizes all municipalities by school district, and then uses the population of every municipality to determine COVID-19 community prevalence rates for each school district.

For more information about how these charts work, here is a YouTube video I made in October which describes how I collect the data each day, how I organize it, and how I construct the charts.

If you have any questions or concerns about this information, please feel free to send them to info@reopenbucks.com or engage with me on this dedicated Facebook post. Please make sure to tag me if you use the Facebook post, so that I’ll be sure to see your question. I will address common criticisms at the bottom of this page.

I will do my best to update these charts somewhat often. While I capture the data from the BCHD COVID Map every day, generating the charts and uploading them here is a bit of a slog, so please excuse me if my updates are sporadic.

All Bucks County School Districts

Bucks County Mask-Optional vs. Mask-Required

Time range is December 13th, 2021 to present, because no districts were mask-optional until the Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision that struck down the state-wide school mask mandate on December 10th.

Bucks County Geographic Comparison

Upper Bucks School Districts

Middle Bucks School Districts

Lower Bucks School Districts

Common Criticisms

Criticism #1: Joshua Hogan is not a doctor

Lol, the brainiacs really got me with this one. I am indeed not a doctor. However, I will say that after the last two years of devastation to the institution of medicine, I am rather proud not to be one.

Criticism #2: Community prevalence is irrelevant, what we care about is in-school prevalence

This is my favorite criticism to receive, because it belies a complete misunderstanding of what the epidemiological goalposts are. The charts show unequivocally that school mitigation does not affect community prevalence (at least not in Bucks County). So folks who make Criticism #2 are essentially saying “I agree that the charts show community prevalence is not changed by COVID mitigation, but what I care about is how much COVID is in the schools, not the community.”

The problem is that if the charts show that community prevalence is unchanged by COVID mitigation (which they do), then what we would want in each school district is for AS MUCH of that community prevalence as possible to be IN THE SCHOOLS. I’m going to say this again, slowly, so that people can understand it, because it is epidemiologically critical.

For a given community prevalence, we want as much of that prevalence as possible to be amongst a population that is NOT at risk, and we want as little of that prevalence as possible to be amongst a population that IS at risk. So who is at risk and who is not? Children are most definitely not at risk, and that has been well accepted since the very beginning of this pandemic. The at-risk adults in the community–the people who we were always concerned would get infected by little Johnny coming home from school–are the people we want to keep from becoming infected.

Since the charts show that community prevalence is totally unaffected by in-school COVID mitigation, we have to deal with the fact that LOWER in-school prevalence is actually a worse outcome. It would imply that a higher percentage of the community prevalence is among adults who are more susceptible to disease than the kids are. A HIGHER in-school prevalence would imply just the opposite.

I know that sounds pretty crazy, counterintuitive, and maybe even paradoxical, but there it is. Epidemiological truth.

For bonus points, you can even listen to Team Apocalypse Hall-of-Famer Dr. Scott Levy, Chief Medical Officer of Doylestown Health, put it very bluntly:

“With all due respect, my greatest fear is not an 8 year old developing Covid-likely mild.

It is that child as a vector bringing the disease to unvaccinated parents and/or vaccinated immunocompromised adults susceptible to serious disease.”


– Dr. Scott Levy, August 15, 2021 (as reported here)

Criticism #3: You are not factoring in other variables

Correct. These charts are simple observations. I am not running a complex intersectional multi-variable study here. I am making very simple observations, intentionally.

Ask yourself, would you have expected the 8 mask-optional school districts to have LOWER community prevalence than the 5 mask-required districts every single day between December 13th and January 18th? It’s a simple question with a simple answer; it doesn’t need to be complicated further with nonsense.

However, if you would like to run some sort of variable-controlled analysis, I say “have at it!”. Knock it out of the park. I even gave you my spreadsheet up above, with all the historical data. Go pick your variables and put in the work. I’ll keep my observations simple. 🙂

Criticism #4: The chart is from ReOpen Bucks, therefore I reject it

Don’t worry, you’ll come around eventually. ReOpen Bucks is far from perfect and we’ve gotten plenty wrong (Lord knows I have), but we’ve been pretty damn right about most stuff. For example, here are some basic facts that are now universally accepted, which ReOpen Bucks was right about all along:

  • Cloth masks do nothing
  • Vaccine passports absolutely will be a thing (remember when this was a conspiracy theory?)
  • The asymptomatic do not spread COVID (confirmed by the National Football League 🏈)
  • School and business closures were harmful and accomplished nothing
  • Vaccination does not prevent infection or transmission
  • We should focus on hospitalizations and deaths, not case rate (from the lips of Joe Biden)
  • Natural immunity is more robust and longer-lasting than vaccination (if you disagree, then please tell me how long until your next booster 🙂)
  • Children are not at risk and schools must remain open

We, little ReOpen Bucks, got all of these right while you got them all wrong, simply because we assessed data from multiple viewpoints and came to our own conclusions. If you choose to reject simple observations because they come from a source you don’t like, then your misunderstanding of reality is on you, not on the source.