or the surge in cases that never happened, cleared untested old people out to care homes – with disastrous results:
With passionate discussions about opening schools, it is good to step back, take a deep breath, and examine what science tells us. To know the effect of smoking, we study smokers. To know the effects of vaccines, we study those vaccinated. Similarly, to know the effects of keeping schools open during the Covid-19 pandemic, we must study the one place that kept their schools open during the height of the pandemic. That place is Sweden.
Sweden never closed day-care centres or schools for its 1.8 million children ages one to 15. Of these children, zero died from Covid-19. The total number of cases is unknown, but the reported number is 468, which is 25 per 100,000. Of these 468 children, eight were hospitalised in an intensive care unit. This means that, whether schools are open or not, children are less at risk from Covid-19 than from influenza, which kills an average of 40-50 children in England and Wales each year. In contrast to influenza, schools are not driving the Covid-19 pandemic, and in Sweden, teachers had the same Covid-19 risk as the average risk among other professions.
It is inappropriate to either exaggerate or dismiss the seriousness of the Covid-19 pandemic. It is still impossible to know what percentage is needed to reach herd immunity or how many people will eventually die, and no respectable epidemiologist will make such claims. Nor do we know how long it will take to get a vaccine, which could be anything from six months to never. The one important thing that we do know is the enormous risk difference by age. Covid-19 is a formidable enemy, and in any war, one must take advantage of the opponent’s weaknesses. That weakness is the near inability of the virus to kill younger people. Hence, it is the young adults among us that must stand in the front line as we fight this enemy. If not, we will have many more casualties than necessary.
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