The Case Against Covid Tests for the Young and Healthy

Hunting for asymptomatic cases encourages pointless shutdowns. Protect the vulnerable instead.

By Jay Bhattacharya and Martin Kulldorff. Excerpt:

"Sweden was the only major Western country that kept schools open for kids 15 and younger throughout the pandemic, with no masks or mass testing. How did it turn out? Zero Covid-19 deaths among 1.8 million children attending day care or school. Teachers didn’t have an excess infection risk compared with the average of other professions. 

The results of reopening schools are also promising in England. Mark Woolhouse of the U.K. Scientific Advisory Committee for Emergencies, has said that “I agreed with lockdown as a short-term emergency response because we couldn’t think of anything better to do,” but “closing schools was not an epidemiologically sensible thing to do.” The U.K. “should have been concentrating on care homes.”

Israeli schools reopened in May, leading to a few outbreaks. But no child was hospitalized or died. An analysis of cellphone mobility data shows that in the weeks leading up to the school opening, Israel had all but returned to prepandemic activity. The Israeli school outbreak was more likely due to community transmission rather than opening classrooms.

As for higher education, most students who are infected will be asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic. If students experience symptoms, a reasonable response might be to confine them to their rooms. An unreasonable response would be to send them home to infect their parents and neighbors, who are at much higher risk than their college friends. Again, testing asymptomatic students would only create panic and pressure universities to close, with concomitant educational, economic and psychological harms."