"Indeed, students are far better off with in-person learning than with online approaches."
General conclusions such as this generally don't age well. Considering we've only had online learning for a little over 2 decades (compared to over a couple of millennia in what we know today as pedagogy and andragogy), I'd say it's too early to tell.
As an online learning professional with nearly two decades' combined work in instructional design and learning experience design, I've found that the most effective online learning programs, whether asynchronous or not, have to be designed properly (much like software and game development) by actual designers with years of experience and the right set of skills. Imagine a high school physics teacher used to presenting classroom content with a blackboard suddenly being asked to learn how to teach the same syllabus online without any knowledge of web or graphics design and you'll get the idea.
Unfortunately, the pandemic has brought many teachers into the forefront of what is, essentially, highly specialized work requiring highly specialized skills. As subject-matter experts, I have no doubt these professors are the most knowledgeable in their field. However, creating effective online content is a whole different set of competencies altogether. What I have seen as "remote learning" from many schools and universities during this pandemic have basically been course curricula adapted to fit into an off-the-shelf learning management system (probably running its poorly-designed default UI). Worst-case scenarios here would be teachers who basically just live-stream their lectures and send pdf copies of entire textbooks, expecting the same results as doing this in person.
I've heard of some universities running training courses and webinars for their faculty for doing online learning but it really isn't enough. I don't blame academia or the teachers, of course, as these are extraordinary times we live in.
An effective online learning program involves a lot of pre-work: analysis, design, development, project management, prototyping, alpha and beta testing, etc., prior to these being released to learners. There is also a lot of work done during implementation to ensure that the modules run correctly along with post-work to evaluate where things could be done better. This value chain is not that far removed from software development or even product development.
Concluding that remote learning is NOT effective when the implementation is probably not done properly is unwise and potentially limits the evolution of our educational system.