Eye doctors had planned to celebrate 2020 as the year of vision (as in seeing 20/20). Instead, it will be known as the year that worsened the world’s vision for decades to come. Scientists are attributing this latest health issue—one that is hidden in plain sight—to the pandemic. Rates of myopia, also known as nearsightedness or shortsightedness, have been increasing worldwide for decades. Half of the world’s population is predicted to be myopic by 2050. The length of time children spend viewing digital screens has been exacerbated by a massive increase in remote schooling, directly contributing to further increases in childhood myopia. Home-schooled children of the COVID-19 era are at risk of becoming the visually compromised population of tomorrow. A recent study of more than 120,000 children in China demonstrated that 6- to 8-year-olds who were in lockdown for the first six months of 2020 are more myopic than their …