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Is there any good data on what impact opening schools[1] actually has on the spread of the virus? Here in Sweden schools were kept open so that essential worke

Is there any good data on what impact opening schools[1] actually has on the spread of the virus? Here in Sweden schools were kept open so that essential workers wouldn't have to stay home from work to take care of their children, and that decision doesn't seem to have impacted us negatively [2]. So it seems to me that, unless a child is in an at-risk group, there shouldn't be a negative impact from sending them to school. The U.S. and Sweden are of course very different countries, so there might be some other factors at play that I haven't thought of. [1] by schools I mean for kids up to the age of about 15, not universities and the like [2] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-sweden-schools-idUSKCN24G2IS https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-sweden...

zhobbs 6y ago
We need to be making more science based risk decisions here. The commentary I see on this topic, like this article, are justifications of whatever viewpoint the person is anchored in (due to emotions, political leadership, or personal home situation). HN should be linking to meta-studies on the topic, not opinion pieces.
jsnell 6y ago
No. We have some idea of what works and what doesn't based on the effects as different countries rolled out different policies in different orders, see [0] for a recent example. But specifically for schools, there just aren't enough data points. Instead they have to be clumped together with closing universities, since almost every country closed all forms of education at the same time. [0] https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.28.20116129v3.full.pdf+html https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.28.20116129v...