a scan of Swedish newspapers. An indirect clue about schools’ role in spread might come from antibody studies. On 19 May, the Swedish Public Health Agency announced preliminary results from antibody surveys of 1100 people from nine regions. They reported that antibody prevalence in children and teenagers was 4.7%, compared with 6.7% in adults age 20 to 64 and 2.7% in 65- to 70-year-olds. The relatively high rate in children suggests there may have been significant spread in schools. The agency did not provide more specific data to distinguish between younger children and those in high schools and universities, which have switched to remote teaching.
There's no doubt that Covid-19 has been relished by the doom mongers who delight in bad news about anything, we've plenty of them in here. Therefore I always look carefully at the language they use.
Everything I've highlighted above introduces evidentially suspect elements, so I treat it with caution.
Of course Sweden has suffered medically from their decisions and I've never denied it, but they've hugely gained financially from those decisions. Currently our UK position is far worse, a much higher death rate than theirs combined with immense economic and psychological damage that we'll suffer from for decades.
I'm convinced that Sweden will eventually have proved to have made the far better choice on balance, that of largely letting the disease take its course without horrifically expensive futile attempts to prevent it.
Of course we could both have taken very early attempts at controlling it better, but that ship sailed long ago and it's revealing how those who claimed early success that way are now all suffering large surges of reinfection.
It supports what I've been maintaining here, despite much opposition, that there is no escaping it so better to get it over with quickly to greatly minimise the overall damage.
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