THE DATA DOESN’T FIT “THE SCIENCE”: Lockdown Addicts. A new — and impressively huge — study of a natural experiment in Sweden shows that closing schools does practically nothing to save lives or stop the spread of Covid. Swedish economists compared Covid infection rates and medical records for all the parents (hundreds of thousands) at senior high schools, which went online during the spring pandemic, against the parents at junior high schools, which stayed open and did not encourage students or teachers wear face masks.
The parents whose children kept going to school were no more likely to be treated or hospitalized for Covid than were the parents of the online students. And the teachers who remained in the classroom had lower rates of infection and hospitalization than did the parents.
A study of this quality ought to be the final word on the subject. But as I write at City Journal, it doesn’t fit “the science” that’s guiding Joe Biden’s Covid advisory board — and the Democratic politicians eager for more lockdowns.