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School Closures Had No Effect On Transmission in Japan

by Noah Carl
15 March 2022 9:21 AM

Back in June of last year, I wrote about a Swedish study which found that keeping schools open had only a minor impact on the spread of Covid. This study was noteworthy because of the rigorous methods it employed to tackle the question at hand.

The authors compared parents whose youngest child was in the last year of lower-secondary school to those whose youngest child was in the first year of upper-secondary school. (Since upper-secondary schools were closed, whereas lower-secondary schools remained open, this allowed them to isolate the impact of school closures.)

They found that there was only one additional positive PCR test per 1,000 parents among those whose youngest child was in the last year of lower-secondary school. This implied, the authors calculated, that keeping schools open led to only 620 additional cases of Covid (in a country that had seen more than 53,000 by the end of the study period).

A Japanese study published in October of last year reaches similar conclusions. Kentaro Fukumoto and colleagues compared the rate of daily new confirmed cases of Covid between municipalities that did and did not implement school closures. (In Japan, this policy was decided at the level of municipalities – of which there are more than 1,700.)

To ensure the two groups of municipalities were comparable, the researchers implemented a rigorous matching procedure. Specifically, they matched each municipality that kept schools open to the most similar possible municipality that closed schools. Dozens of variables were taken into account when gauging similarity.

After matching on all these variables, the only policy with respect to which municipalities in the two groups differed was school closures. In other words, no two matched municipalities were subject to different policies on staying-at-home, closing businesses or cancelling public events. (Note: in Japan, these policies were requests, rather than orders.)

The researchers found that case rates were not significantly higher in municipalities that kept schools open. They ran a number of additional analyses, and confirmed that their results were robust. School closures had no discernible impact on the spread of Covid in Japan. (Note: another Japanese study made the same finding back in 2020.)

So what’s true in Sweden is also true in Japan. There is little benefit, if any, to closing schools. And of course, this picayune benefit has to be weighed against the many, very tangible costs of school closures. It’s no wonder that even erstwhile members of Independent SAGE are admitting they got this one wrong.

Tags: JapanLockdownSchool Closures

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47 Comments
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Doom Slayer
Doom Slayer
3 years ago

dailynoshitshelock.org

29
0
Dodgy Geezer
Dodgy Geezer
3 years ago
Reply to  Doom Slayer

Is this a valid url? If not, it ought to be….

7
0
Doom Slayer
Doom Slayer
3 years ago
Reply to  Dodgy Geezer

Toby has is in storage i reckon. Along with

dailystillabitsceptic.org
dailyarewestillsceptic.org
dailysorrynotallowedtobesceptic.org
dailyscienceissettled.org

8
0
Aleajactaest
Aleajactaest
3 years ago
Reply to  Doom Slayer

dailystillwaitingformygong
dailycantpostthatillgetintotrouble
dailypostingshitethatreallyrilesmyaudience
dailyshouldn’tlinktograuniadfailortorygraphbuthavebeentoldtodoit

4
0
kate
kate
3 years ago

This has just come in on Steve Kirsch’s substack.
https://stevekirsch.substack.com/p/pathologist-ryan-cole-on-the-mysterious?s=r
Pathologist Ryan Cole on the mysterious blood clots
I interviewed Dr. Ryan Cole on the mystery blood clots that are seen in up to 93% of embalmer cases. He received tissue samples from the embalmers.
Bottom line: Dr. Cole had no other explanation for these clots which can kill people other than the vaccine. It didn’t happen during COVID at all.
Silence from the CDC on all of this (as you’d expect).
You’d think with this affecting up to 93% of cases, the CDC might be just a little interested? No chance.
You might think the mainstream press would cover this? No chance.

26
0
kate
kate
3 years ago
Reply to  kate

The abnormal clots contain white cells and fibrin – holding large amounts of protein which makes them rubbery.
They are directly formed by the impact of the spike on blood. And as spike lasts for a long time in the body, (because the genetic instructions from the vax create an artificially stable spike protein that we now know is persistent) the clotting process continues, and the clots build.
Steve Kirsch has had two vaxxes, so I do not know how he feels about his prospects.

13
0
Dodgy Geezer
Dodgy Geezer
3 years ago
Reply to  kate

Might this be more of an issue for people who have had vaccinations directly into a blood vessel rather than intramuscular? I believe that there was some concern during the mass vaccination that some vaccinators were not using a proper technique…?

3
0
John Dee
John Dee
3 years ago
Reply to  Dodgy Geezer

All vaccinators in the UK are told that aspiration (drawing back the syringe plunger to ensure there is no venous blood therein) is not required. This despite it being standard practice for decades. Dr Campbell showed vax injections in China where the injector took a fraction of a second to check before the injection was completed.
Too difficult (or ‘time-wasting’) for our jabbers, it seems.
And tough luck if you receive a veinful of what was supposed to go into a shoulder muscle.
Still, our NHS is the envy of the world, innit – so we must be right?

9
0
David Beaton
David Beaton
3 years ago
Reply to  kate

This shocking revelation has been around for some time but seems mysterioulsy to have had little attention .

9
0
Alter Ego
Alter Ego
3 years ago
Reply to  David Beaton

The great problem is of course that the mainstream media studiously avoid an enormous amount of evidence, in a world in which people have been trained to believe that they “basically” get things right.

People have also been trained to be wary of “fringe” ideas and “conspiracy theories”.

What makes it all the more difficult is that they have additionally been taught that those who believe in or follow “fringe” ideas and “conspiracy theories” might be highly intelligent and well-meaning.. So any qualifications, knowledge and general decency they have no longer counts – they are deluded, carried away.

When we speak with emotion because we’re alarmed at what’s being done to people, it’s seen as further evidence that we are not entirely rational.

We’re not only dealing with the ferocity of the last two years, but with the insidious developments of at least the last half century. So much has come to a head.

6
0
JXB
JXB
3 years ago
Reply to  Alter Ego

Fringe ideas and conspiracy theories these days come from Governments and the media.

2
0
TheGreenGoblin
TheGreenGoblin
3 years ago
Reply to  Alter Ego

Kafkaesque.

0
0
Dale
Dale
3 years ago
Reply to  kate

He’s probably waggling a finger at those who’ve had three.

0
0
BillRiceJr
BillRiceJr
3 years ago
Reply to  kate

Practically every interview Kirsch does is important and thought-provoking. I can’t think of one interview or topic that’s been followed up with by a mainstream media “journalist.” This is the tell about our “watchdog” press. If it’s potentially important – and challenges the narrative – they don’t cover it.

3
0
amanuensis
amanuensis
3 years ago

What was known quite early on (summer 2020 IIRC) is that children are more likely to catch Covid than adults, but far less likely to infect others. There was even a UK study into this that showed that children’s biggest risk was infection from teachers (but it was okay because they didn’t get ill). Teachers themselves mainly caught Covid from other teachers (again, IIRC).

This actual science has been routinely ignored — indeed, they keep on saying that it is the children that are causing a substantial amount of transmission (and thus they must be vaccinated, even though that doesn’t stop infection/transmission anyway).

But, of course, ignoring the science and promoting random stuff (that promotes some agenda or another) is exactly what politicians have done from the start.

24
0
stewart
stewart
3 years ago
Reply to  amanuensis

Teachers just used covid as an excuse to not show up to work but continue to get paid.

They dangled the emotional threat of what would happen if teachers start dying from covid. No politician wanted to live with that. So easier to close schools. Children don’t have a voice, don’t vote. Parents don’t want to rage against teachers because they look after their children. Perfect storm, really. Which also explains why schools are among the last places to drop mask mandates.

Interestingly, anyone know of any teachers that caught covid in a school and died? I’m not aware of any, and I’m pretty sure if it had happened it would have been all over the news.

21
0
TheBluePill
TheBluePill
3 years ago
Reply to  stewart

The only teachers that I know who caught it, did so at Christmas 2021. They spent the best part of two years in classrooms with the little germbags darlings and failed to catch the plague coof. Instead, as soon as they were brave enough to have a Christmas social, they spread it like wildfire amongst themselves. Sniffles all round, of course due to them needlessly thankfully being vaccinated, ignoring the lone brave wreckless unvaccinated member of their group having barely noticeable symptoms.

12
0
Julian
Julian
3 years ago

Nothing made any difference anywhere, as predicted at the start, by us and most pandemic planners before 2020.

33
0
JXB
JXB
3 years ago
Reply to  Julian

Not merely succinctly put, but factually correct.

5
0
TheGreenGoblin
TheGreenGoblin
3 years ago
Reply to  Julian

Not quite. Some measures made things worse.

Last edited 3 years ago by TheGreenGoblin
6
0
tom171uk
tom171uk
3 years ago
Reply to  TheGreenGoblin

Indeed they did. It’s clear that school closures damaged children’s education. Mask mandates damaged the mental health of adults and children alike. Our health has been damaged by the blessed NHS shutting its doors.

Last edited 3 years ago by tom171uk
9
0
John Dee
John Dee
3 years ago
Reply to  tom171uk

Not to mention all the elderly unfortunates doomed to die unvisited in care homes, having been infected by their untested fellow inmates who’d been kicked out of hospital beds.
As shambles go, this one would take some beating.

8
0
John Dee
John Dee
3 years ago
Reply to  Julian

Indeed. If there was an agenda in all the precautions, nobody bothered to show it to the virus, which merrily did what viruses do.

2
0
Emerald Fox
Emerald Fox
3 years ago

Talking of ‘fake news’ I’d like to point out that the photo for this article is a fake – I’ve been up the Tokyo Tower and Mount Fuji just isn’t that close! You can just about make it out on the horizon. If you doubt this, try this photo:

https://www.123rf.com/photo_96737210_tokyo-aerial-view-city-skyline-with-tokyo-tower-tokyo-japan.html

4
-1
Jo Starlin
Jo Starlin
3 years ago
Reply to  Emerald Fox

Thanks, I wondered about that pic, as while I remember seeing Mount Fuji from the plane approaching Tokyo I can’t recall being able to see it from anywhere in the city.

0
0
John Dee
John Dee
3 years ago
Reply to  Emerald Fox

One of the pandemic’s side-effects has been making mountains appear closer than they are.

7
0
Trish
Trish
3 years ago
Reply to  John Dee

And mountains out of molehills….

1
0
Marcus Aurelius knew
Marcus Aurelius knew
3 years ago
Reply to  Emerald Fox

I think the photo in your link has had the mountain removed. So ner.

0
0
Idle Eric
Idle Eric
3 years ago

It’s worth noting that both studies appear to cover spring 2020 (i.e. pre Alpha), and are from countries with a low, or very low incidence of the virus in the first place.

It is far from certain that the same finding would be found in countries with higher incidence, or with Alpha or later variants of the virus.

0
0
JXB
JXB
3 years ago
Reply to  Idle Eric

Sweden low incidence? Data please.

The studies were comparative. It doesn’t matter what the prevalence in the Country was, as long as there was no difference in prevalence in the two areas compared.

4
0
RW
RW
3 years ago
Reply to  Idle Eric

It’s worth nothing that we’ve all been fed a diet which was very high on I don’t know something, therefore … ramblings aka appeals to ignorance for the last two years. Because of the absolutely marvellous human immune system, robust natural immunity against that has developed meanwhile.

Specifically, this means that absolutely nothing follows from Idle Eric is ignorant of something and that your text is thus free of content.

0
0
JXB
JXB
3 years ago

Which raises an interesting question. The justification for closing schools/masking the little dears was supposedly based on schools and their children being significant spreaders of influenza, ergo must apply to CoV 2.

So if it is now shown that schools/children are not CoV spreaders, might not the same be true for influenza?

Despite all past experience that showed that habitual masked populations like Japanese and other Asians with this predilection, produced no noticeable reduction in spread of influenza and deaths during epidemics, the reverse was applied to CoV 2.

It’s clear now, the CoVid Pandemic Playbook used by Governments was to look up all past experience and what had been learned, and do the opposite.

9
0
TheGreenGoblin
TheGreenGoblin
3 years ago
Reply to  JXB

It was to submit to base instincts because of lack of leadership, lack of ability in leadership, and a frightened population.

3
0
TheyLiveAndWeLockdown
TheyLiveAndWeLockdown
3 years ago
Reply to  JXB

It was probably to ensure people “worked from home”.

0
0
BillRiceJr
BillRiceJr
3 years ago
Reply to  JXB

The more I think about it, it’s clear that the flu vaccine program was vital to what was to come with the COVID vaccine program. The flu “vaccine” doesn’t work either, but this didn’t stop non-stop marketing and advertising to get as much of the population vaccinated as possible.

FWIW, the estimates of flu deaths pushed by the CDC are also highly suspect and subject to massive future revisions.

2
0
RW
RW
3 years ago
Reply to  BillRiceJr

Worth repeating: Prior to the avian influenza non-event of 2004, flu vaccines didn’t seem to exist (ie, I’ve never even heard of someone who would have wanted one).

0
0
BillRiceJr
BillRiceJr
3 years ago
Reply to  RW

Per my research, only 500 people died of the flu in the 2002-2003 flu season – per CDC estimates at the time. Skip forward 15 years and the CDC said that 80,000 Americans died from the flu in the 2017-2018 flu season.

Strangely and for reasons that make no sense, the CDC later revised this death estimate to 61,000 deaths and now estimate that 53.000 people died of the flu that flu season. So basically, somehow, the number of people who died from the flu that winter decreased by 37,000 deaths (almost 40 percent).

1
0
John Dee
John Dee
3 years ago

School Closures Had No Effect On Transmission in Japan

If, that is, you discount the transmission of education.

6
0
MikeHaseler
MikeHaseler
3 years ago

It’s beyond doubt that the lockup was the most insane public policy measure in recent history.

10
0
BillRiceJr
BillRiceJr
3 years ago

The policy in Sweden led to only 620 additional “cases.” We don’t know the age of the people who would have contracted these cases, but surely most were under 40 – as most parents or students are under 40. As probably 70 percent of “cases” were asymptomatic or very mild, maybe only an additional 186 people in all of Sweden even met the definition of being “sick.”

A bad flu outbreak causes 186 people to be sick in the smallest of towns.

Those 620 cases might have arguably led to one or two preventable “deaths.” For this alleged benefit you close schools in an entire country for years?

Last edited 3 years ago by BillRiceJr
0
0
RW
RW
3 years ago
Reply to  BillRiceJr

Those 620 cases might have arguably led to one or two preventable “deaths.”

Another shining example of Considering what we really believe in, it seems plausible that … reasoning. The only way to determine if a death was preventable is to rerun the experiment without the supposed prevention measures and ascertain that it then always has a different outcome. This is impossible. Hence, we cannot possibly know this.

This is not so much supposed to be a criticism of your statement, more a hint showing the Covidianism which has also crept into your mind. As rational human beings, we must accept that our knowledge about this world is limited and that we can’t fill this gap with speculation.

0
0
BillRiceJr
BillRiceJr
3 years ago
Reply to  RW

No, I understand your point and agree with it. It’s impossible to know if the lockdowns prevented any deaths – because the only way to know that would be to go back in time and not do those things … and even then you would have no way of knowing what the other result would have been.

That’s why I worded my statement the way I did. “These cases might have “arguably” led to one or two preventable deaths.

People argue that these measures prevented millions of deaths. I’m not one of these people. You could more plausible argue that the lockdowns caused millions of preventable deaths.

1
0
RW
RW
3 years ago
Reply to  BillRiceJr

That’s not my understanding of argue as there’s no argument in such a statement. So-disposed people assert that this must have happened because of their preconceived belief that their infection control measures are effective and that this infection must be controlled to avoid disaster.

I think it’s important to avoid granting them this point as this immediately leads to the Granny killer accusation: Had I (the person in favour of Corona measures) only been allowed to do as I wanted to, deaths could have been prevented! But that’s a nonsense claim. There’s no way to prove that presence of something has prevented a death which would otherwise have happened. As it stands, we (as humans) can kill people but we cannot stop them from dying.

Considering this, I’d argue that lockdowns et al caused a lot of harm due to their (by now) well-documented directly harmful effects. But not that they caused preventable deaths because we cannot know this.

0
0
Jabby Mcstiff
Jabby Mcstiff
3 years ago

There was never a sincere attempt to understand this pathogen. It was the very signature of every investigation that sincerity was not an option. You could see that from the beginning. If you want to understand it you have to see it as essentially a measurement tool that was introduced when the system was coming down in February 2020. They milked it for everything they could and the mechanisms are still in place. It isn’t actually that difficult to understand when you grasp the idea that the world is given over to evil on a systemic level. In fact is is exactly what you might expect.

0
0
PureNonVaxxed1776
PureNonVaxxed1776
3 years ago

Ivermectin help reduce the severity of vaccine adverse reactions. If someone is suffering from a post vaccine syndrome, FLCCC clinicians and a growing network of colleagues have reported significant clinical responses to ivermectin. Because Ivermectin has 5 different mechanisms of action against coronaviruses, the medication is also effective with the different variants of the virus. If you want to get Ivermectin you can visit https://ivmpharmacy.com

Last edited 3 years ago by PureNonVaxxed1776
0
0
Emerald Fox
Emerald Fox
3 years ago
Reply to  PureNonVaxxed1776

More spam advertising for some pills from India. It makes me laugh – all this speculation about what’s in the ‘vaccines’ yet willing to drop these tablets from India down your throat without question?!

0
0
Banjones
Banjones
3 years ago

‘PCR’ eh? That test that can’t detect infection, you mean?
No doubt Dr Kary Mullis would turn in his untimely grave if he knew how his work was being abused.

1
0

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