Martin Kulldorff

Hi Eli, best scientific evidence: Sweden never closed day-care/primary schools, with zero COVID19 deaths and few hospitalized among 1.8 million children ages 1-15. It can spread in schools, but safer than flu, even with #OpenSchools at height of pandemic. https://folkhalsomyndigheten.se/contentassets/c1b78bffbfde4a7899eb0d8ffdb57b09/covid-19-school-aged-children.pdf …

I’m not worried about the kids. I’m worried about the teachers and parents and grandparents. South Korea controlled the outbreak with testing and tracing, how’s that working in the US? Comparing US to other countries is not helpful

Important considerations. Again, best evidence from Sweden. With schools open, compared to other professions, the #COVID19 RR was 0.9 (95% CI 0.7-1.1) for day-care and 1.1 (95% CI 0.9-1.3) for primary school teachers. Sample size 260K. 1/2 https://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/contentassets/c1b78bffbfde4a7899eb0d8ffdb57b09/covid-19-school-aged-children.pdf …

With open schools in Stockholm, high-risk elderly age >70 that live with a working-age adult had the same #COVID19 risk whether or not they also lived with children age <16. 2/2 https://su.figshare.com/articles/preprint/Residential_Context_and_COVID-19_Mortality_among_the_Elderly_in_Stockholm_A_population-based_observational_study/12612947/1 …

What’s your epi interpretation of this data? Kids don’t spread respiratory viruses? Not a hill I’d want to die on. Seems everyone is desperate for your conclusion though.

As an MD you obviously know that children can spread respiratory viruses. So, I do not understand why you are asking the 2nd question. During a pandemic, it is important not to generate misunderstandings/misinformation.

Don’t think Sweden’s data is being used correctly. Since baseline risk of death in Sweden was 2x my state’s, I’m not reassured with internal comparisons of teachers, day care workers. It’s misleading. It’s not generalizable and is using the wrong control, so no internal validity

To know the effect of #OpenSchools during the pandemic, we need to utilize the data from the one place that kept schools open during the pandemic. Since teachers had no excess risk, schools/children are not major vectors spreading the disease (unlike influenza).