Groups such as the World Health Organization, The Economist, Oxford’s Coronavirus Government Response Tracker, and Our World in Data have been crunching numbers to analyze the results of countries’ various methods for controlling the pandemic. Sweden’s hands-off approach is one that has garnered particular attention. According to the analysts, it out-performed the United States, although, when compared to all countries, it came out with an average grade.
Sweden issued no stay-at-home orders and no mask mandates. They avoided lockdown, allowing bars, restaurants, schools, and shops to remain open. Instead, they asked citizens to protect themselves and offered lots of guidance
and recommendations for avoiding infections. Most importantly, they vaccinated
like crazy. (On average, vaccination reduces the risk of severe outcomes and
death by more than 80 percent.) In Sweden, a rapid rollout of vaccines reached
87 percent of the country’s population over 60 years of age by May of 2021.
Sweden’s schools didn’t close, and their students did not
suffer learning loss. In the U.S., the virus forced a near-total shutdown of
school buildings in the spring of 2020. At their peak, the closures affected at least 55.1 million
students in 124,000 public and private schools. Nearly every state either
ordered or recommended that schools remain closed through the end of the
2019-20 school year. But many schools, including private schools, reopened by mid-2020. While some people did
contract Covid at these schools, the overall effect on the virus’s spread was
close to zero. U.S. communities with closed schools had similar levels of Covid
as communities with open schools. Despite the emerging data that schools were
not superspreaders, many U.S districts remained closed well into 2021, even
after vaccines were available. About half of American children lost at least a
year of full-time school. Those closures are now largely regarded as a mistake.
For an introduction to this blog, see I Just Say No; for a list of blog topics, click the Topics tab.
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I agree with this article. I believe all lockdowns in every facet were a monumental mistake. I think it was very unfortunate to deem the lower ranking people in society as “essential” so that they could bare the brunt force of the virus in its most virulent form to serve others with no honor, respect, or monetary compensation. Then to have the government pay people giant sums of inflated unemployment checks to sit at home and be “served”. It was very archaic. I only have one question. Why was McDonald’s allowed to be open 24/7, but Joe’s burger shack was forced to shut down?
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