A “no classes until further notice” sign is taped to the front door of Edison Elementary School Tuesday, April 14, 2020, in Salt Lake City. Utah joined more than 20 other states Tuesday in canceling classes at public schools for the rest of the school year to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. Students will finish the year doing mostly online assignments to avoid the risk of crowded classrooms, Gov. Gary Herbert said. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)

As we, in the land of the free and the home of the brave, respond to the Wuhan pandemic by hunkering down, whimpering at the thought of society reopening, and searching in vain for a new set of brown trousers to wear with our fashionable face mask, an interesting experiment is underway in Europe. In Sweden, which has done basically nothing at all in response to the virus, the death rate per one million of population remains significantly lower than American states that have instituted the most draconian regulations.

Today, there is a big divergence in deaths per capita, but growth in this over a week has slowed significantly in Spain, Italy and France, while Belgium's data includes suspected cases and care home figures. US in 10th place excluding micro states pic.twitter.com/jghXSUnAuD — Charlie Robertson (@RencapMan) April 22, 2020

That’s right, you can actually have your economy and a life that isn’t limited to hiding under your bed and deal with Wuhan virus, too.

Unlike here, some European countries are concluding that the virus isn’t quite as dangerous as the modelers and public health nazis would have us believe. Switzerland has announced that it will reopen schools on May 11.

According to the Federal Council, all compulsory primary classes, closed since the government declared the state of emergency on March 16th, should resume on May 11th. This includes two years of kindergarten, followed by six years of primary school. Secondary and vocational schools, as well as universities, are expected to resume on June 8th.

Why would they do that?

The Swiss have analyzed data available on children and Wuhan virus and found that the viral load, that is, the quantity of virus carried in the blood, of children with Wuhan virus, is extremely low. This, in their estimation, is what accounts for the large number of asymptomatic children. The implication from this observation is that children simply can’t carry enough virus to infect another person, whether it be playmate, sibling, parent, or granny in the old folks home. When children do get the virus, they are usually not seriously affected. So far, Europe has had a total of two children die from the effects of Wuhan virus, one in France and one in Italy. Of the 3,200 people hospitalized in Switzerland from the virus, only 18 are children.

Based on science, not modeling, the Swiss have elected to reopen their schools.

And if they are wrong? Well, they are no worse off than Sweden and better off than the US.

If that process were followed in the US, we’d be reopened tomorrow. Empirically, we know that the death rate this year is lower than it was two years ago. We know that California definitely had carriers of Wuhan virus present in mid-January, and quite possibly in November and December. There was no spike in deaths there and the death toll in CA remains lower than that of Kansas, at less than 25% of the US average death rate. We know from the USS Theodore Roosevelt experience that even without ‘social distancing’ and with a large number of people living in very close quarters that the virus simply does not spread as rapidly as the models predict it spreads WITH draconian limits on activity.

In short, our policies are not being driven by science in the hypothesis-experiment-evaluate sense but by science in the sense of some rando with a secret-sauce model and a megaphone to the press creating a panic and science in the sense of what some ‘expert’ feels we should be doing.

Nothing we are doing is getting us better results than countries literally doing nothing. Our policies are driven by the political agenda of a scientific priesthood that seems bound and determined to impoverish us and our children. This nonsense we are inflicting upon ourselves needs to stop and stop fast.