We never know what triggers the Silicon Valley STASI snowflakes - my guess is when he said the risk to children was less than influenza it triggered them because it is somethign Trump said.... "They can get infected for sure, but the risk from COVID for children is less than the risk from annual influenza, which is already very low for children. So for them, this is not a risky thing. "

Dr. Kulldorff: I think it is, without a doubt. There are two aspects of that. One is, while anybody can get infected by COVID, there’s more than a thousand-fold difference in the risk for death between the oldest and the youngest. So with the naive belief that these lockdowns would protect everybody—which now, obviously, we know that didn’t work—a lot of people got COVID, and a lot of people died.

But there was this naive belief that they would protect the older people. Because of that, we did not implement basic public health measures to actually do what was necessary to protect those older high-risk people. And because of that, many of them died unnecessarily from COVID. The other aspect of it is the collateral damage from these lockdowns.

For example, children didn’t go to school. The children are at miniscule risk from this disease in terms of mortality. They can get infected for sure, but the risk from COVID for children is less than the risk from annual influenza, which is already very low for children. So for them, this is not a risky thing. And one example is Sweden.

From the first wave in the spring of 2020, Sweden was the only Western country that did not close down all the schools. So schools and daycares were open for children ages 1 to 15. Among the 1.8 million children in Sweden during this first wave, there were exactly zero deaths from COVID. And that was without using masks, without social distancing and without any testing. If a child was sick, they were told to stay home. That was it.

So this is not a serious disease for children, which we should be very grateful for. Also young adults have very low risk for mortality from COVID. But the collateral damage has been enormous from these lockdowns.

Cardiovascular disease outcomes and heart disease has been bad during this pandemic because people don’t go to the hospitals. The health care that they need is just not available, like for diabetes patients, for example.

Cancer has actually gone down in 2020 and 2021, but that’s not because there is less cancer. It’s just that we’re not detecting them. And if we’re not detecting them, we’re not treating them either. This is nothing that shows up in the statistics this year, except to a very small extent. But let’s say women who didn’t get their cervical cancer screening might now die three or four years from now, instead of living another 15, 20 years.

So the collateral damage on public health from these lockdowns is something that we’re going to have to live with and die with for many, many years to come, unfortunately. Then of course, there’s the mental health aspect, which has been enormous and tragic.

This has really been an awful response to the pandemic which goes against the basic principles of public health that we have followed for many decades. So it’s very unfortunate.