Part of the point is at the time of decision it's not clear that the students can do that gap year stuff if they take a gap year now. They wouldn't be doing it so they can travel to Brazil, but so they don't have a difficult semester (or year) in college.
Not sure I see this anywhere in GP's comment. But I certainly agree that you that it doesn't make a lot of sense to take a gap year if you can't identify, with a reasonable degree of confidence, anything valuable (or at least fun) to do during it. And I agree that this makes 2020 (perhaps also 2021) an especially poor time for gap years.
