Posted on 08/16/2021 9:16:56 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Sweden's Covid-19 strategy for schools is complex, but nonchalant attitudes and a lack of systematic protection for schoolchildren can only be described as irresponsible, argues Lisa Bjurwald in this opinion piece.
In the US, liberal news media are reporting with horror that several Republican-led states will penalise schools that require masks. This despite the number of infected children soaring, not least in Republican states such as Florida and Texas, and despite leading public health experts including the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommending universal indoor masking in schools this year.
In Swedish schools, you’d be hard-pressed to find any measures at all, if you don’t count a few bottles of sanitiser here and there and (at least in some schools, and at least in the first months of the pandemic) extra spacious seating in the dining halls. Masks have never been mandatory or even socially accepted here – certainly not in the classrooms. Yet this school year, närundervisning (in-school teaching, or literally “close teaching”) will replace distance learning.
Instructions to schools from the Public Health Agency of Sweden are meek and, just as the Swedish pandemic strategy as a whole, based on “recommendations”, “advice”, “suggestions” and the like, rather than mandatory rules. “If possible, work in smaller groups [than usual],” and so on.
On August 12th, the Public Health Agency and The Swedish National Agency for Education (Skolverket) announced that the possibility of preventive distance learning has been removed. This in the face of renewed spread and mutated strains. As opposed to neighbouring countries Finland and Denmark, Sweden hasn’t lowered the recommended vaccine age to include children, instead sticking with 16 years of age (thus excluding the entire elementary school system).
To some parents, foreign and Swedish-born alike, this idea of business as usual is a relief. Not that they don’t care about their children’s well-being, but rather that the unique Swedish approach to Covid-19 has allowed for young school-aged children to live normal lives during a potentially frightening global crisis.
Many of us who have friends and family abroad know what a toll regular school closings and futile attempts at homeschooling have taken on parents and pupils alike. I have close friends in London who were all nearly having a nervous breakdown at different times during the past year, their young, hyper-energetic broods literally “climbing the walls” (as we say in Sweden) out of frustration.
On the other side of these walls, mums and dads were trying and failing to have serious job conversations over Skype. It would have been funny for a week or two, a story to tell the grandchildren, but months on end, with no end in sight? No wonder European psychiatric helplines have nearly crashed from the number of desperate callers.
But there’s also a group of Sweden-based parents increasingly worried about the country’s lax attitude towards Covid-19, not least in the classrooms. As the new Delta variant of the virus is dominating the spread, and infection rates are increasing in major cities like Stockholm, anxiety is brewing over the return to schools this week.
The message from the Swedish government and Public Health Agency has consistently been that kids don’t get sick from the coronavirus. But reports of Long Covid in children tell a different story. While children fortunately end up in hospital emergency units very rarely, they can develop the same debilitating post-Covid symptoms as adults, including extreme tiredness, recurring fever spells, and frightening cognitive symptoms like “brain fog” with difficulties focusing.
No one knows how long Long Covid lasts. Tens of thousands of those infected in the spring of 2020 around the globe are still suffering from the after-effects. The WHO has acknowledged post-Covid as a global health concern. Networks and organisations for the affected have been set up, clinical research initiated. But the Swedish response has been gruellingly slow, particularly in comparison with countries such as the United Kingdom, where a heap of special post-Covid clinics has been set up to care for the ill.
A recent report from the Swedish Children’s Ombudsman studied the consequences of Covid-19 on children’s rights and found that a surprising number of Swedish children are suffering from severe, life-altering post-Covid symptoms. I write in-depth in Swedish about the report here.
The fact that children can be negatively affected physically by the virus puts the Swedish pandemic school strategy – or lack thereof – in a different light.
A measured, fact-based response is preferable to a gut reaction driven by fear and/or populism, as seen across the world since the outbreak early last year. If children could neither get infected nor spread the potentially deadly disease, schools could pretty much be exempt from preventive measures.
But now, a year and a half into the Covid-19 pandemic, science tells us differently. Children can both spread the virus to vulnerable family members – especially with the sneakier Delta variant – and suffer severe post-Covid symptoms themselves, even if the infection itself was mild.
With this knowledge in mind, the lack of protection for our youngest citizens and the nonchalant attitudes from those in power cannot be described as anything else but irresponsible. I believe that this will be a major issue of regret and reckoning for Sweden in the post-pandemic years.
And who is she when she is at home? In all seriousness whenever I read that we must do this or that re COVID because of what “health experts” claim I want to add the footnote, “Health experts who have not been silenced for their refusal to go along with the rest of us, and who offer scientific rationale for alternate approaches.”
Schoolchildren don’t need “systematic protection.” They’re at near zero risk, as data gathered over the last year and a half consistently have shown.
“The top expert in any field rarely works for the government.”
As has been proven N times (where N is an unspeakably large number) by Fauci the Faker.
Oh noes
😱😱😱😱😱
They’re all gonna die
I believe, as far as children are concerned, contracting COVID is more akin to getting COOTIES.
RE: By the way, speaking of young people, did you see that out of 2.2 million military personnel, a total of 24 have died of COVID?
How many percent of those who died of
Covid were unvaccinated?
I don’t.
More Capital Police have committed suicide than children dying from Covid.
It’s not about the virus.
It’s about the control.
As we all know.
In COVID CASES, Florida peaked in early August 2020 (15k), dropped to a sixth in September (2.5k), peaked in Jan. 2021 (19.3k), dropped till June (1k) and has hit a new peak NOW (25k).
However, note the difference in FATALITIES for these same peaks (note that deaths lag detection); 08/20 High 242, 10/20 High 71, 01/21 High 215, 06/21 High 54, 08/21 High [NOW] 88! Thus for Florida at least, while we have 10k more daily detections, we have 80% fewer deaths!
To me it looks like, at this view of graphs, a good ttrend even in GOP-Evil Florida!
They didn't mandate shutting down, but their economy dropped 8% in the second quarter last year, same as ours with our government-mandated shutdown. They had the worst economic performance in Scandanavia.
Where are the million deaths? They never happened.
Sweden had the worst mortality in Scandanavia. 10 times more mortality per capita than Norway, 8 times more than Finland, 3 times more than Denmark.
On the plus side, their kids will be healthier having had normal lives for the past 18 months.
I think we need to go with the ‘Dr. Pepper’ Covid Plan. You take a ‘Jab’ at 10 2 and 4 everyday for the rest of your life.
and 15x as many with vehicle deaths in the same time. The death rate for kids in the US over 19 months is 5 per million...and that’s including those with extreme comorbidities...excluding that its about 1 per million.
Beginning May of last year, I developed an Excel spreadsheet concerning the virus relying on the John Hopkins site for virus data and Wikipedia for population and political data for the states. I have updated it occasionally regarding the virus. The April 21 tab includes Sweden, which of course is famous for having few restrictions. As of that date, its experience in terms of deaths per million beat all but 15 of our states.
For that date I also computed the average death rate for the five adjacent states in the NE megalopolis (MA, NJ, NY, RI, CT) and it was 2,560. Most Swedes live in the southwest, which means it is also highly urbanized. Sweden’s death rate of 1,365.43 is about half for a similar population density.
The best science the CDC can point to for a mask mandate is a group of uncontrolled studies highlighting first such groups as 139 hairdresser clients, 382 sailors on the U.S.S. Roosevelt, 124 Beijing households, and 839 Thailand residents subject to contact tracing. All results come from observation followed by personal judgement, and none result from the mathematical disciplines used to evaluate complex environments. In the same article the CDC disparages the 2020 randomized controlled trial (RCT) in Denmark involving 4,862 participants, which found no benefit to wearing a mask to prevent infection.
The disciplines of a RCT divides participants into different groups on a randomized basis. Random assignment means that factors not specifically controlled can cancel each other out by appearing equally in both groups. One group receives the treatment (which in this case was the mask) and the other group does not. Researchers can isolate the one variable and are not able to introduce biases to produce a preferred outcome.
RCT’s are considered the highest standard for this type of research. Therefore, the most reasonable approach the CDC could take would be to use this study as one to which others would be evaluated. An especially valid approach, since the first four combined from their May scientific brief have less than half the participants of the Danish study.
Do Masks Work? https://www.city-journal.org/do-masks-work-a-review-of-the-evidence?wallit_nosession=1 Effectiveness of Adding a Mask Recommendation to Other Public Health Measures to Prevent SARS-CoV-2 Infection in Danish Mask Wearers: A Randomized Controlled Trial https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33205991/
Making children wear masks in the classroom is 'child abuse': Report in Ireland says it can worsen existing health issues, stunt language skills and cause psychological harm https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9887207/Making-children-wear-masks-classroom-child-abuse.html
Advice to the National Public Health Emergency Team: Reduction of the minimum age for the application of mask wearing requirements and recommendations https://www.hiqa.ie/sites/default/files/2021-03/Advice-to-NPHET-on-face-mask-use-in-children.pdf
“I believe Sweden will regret its approach to Covid in schools”
That’s because you are profoundly stupid. You claim to be a “journalist,” so what makes you think you are qualified to have an opinion on this?
“Sweden had the worst mortality in Scandanavia.”
Because they bailed on trying to save seniors. They didn’t try to save them when they fell ill. That’s why their numbers are higher proportionately in the region.
Here they did it in limited areas. In NYC, if you were ill, they sent you home and said check in if you are turning blue. By then, most would not recover and die. Some were found dead in their homes.
The average adult human receiving a high viral load of a cold virus they had years ago will get it again. Zinc and vitamins and cow medicine and who knows, maybe eye of newt and ear of bat (well boiled!) may help a little, but up that viral load some more and you'll likely be hacking and coughing in a few days.
Human immune systems do better with long term naturally gained immunity to more often dangerous diseases (like chicken pox as an adult), but even that frequently fades. See: Shingles.
If Covid took out a strong % of humans in their reproductive years, eventually we might develop resistance to it, perhaps something like chicken pox. However, Covid mutates into new strains quickly enough that we might not ever catch up. Luckily, Covid would probably* mutate down in severity: The virus can't be successful in the long run if it kills too many of its hosts.
*This is widely misunderstood. Viruses usually mutate "down" in lethality if they kill too many of their hosts, but the pressure on Covid to mutate down is quite low. If "Delta" had a CFR 3x that of the original Covid, or such a new variant developed (Delta infectiousness and 3x the CFR), no epidemiologist or virologist worth a damn would be surprised.
I don't know of any other major "hot" state with a similar curve disparity. (Not saying such does not exist - I suppose any other state could make a similar change.)
Now, I am still hopeful the increased efforts on the treatment end, esp. monoclonal antibody treatments, will help hold down FL's fatalities numbers these last couple weeks, and then the rolloff from the cases peak, which seems to be developing, will kick in. But, the bottom line is that I just don't think we'll know what that fatalities curve, since its recent apparent peak, actually looks like, for a couple more weeks - maybe even a month.
What? A balanced perspective post?
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