Sweden’s top infectious disease expert has been shown to deliberately pursue hereditary immunity to coronavirus – saying the death risk for parents could be “worthwhile”, according to a newly released email.
Anders Tegnell – equivalent to Sweden as Dr Anthony Fauci – was already under fire for seemingly catastrophic responses to the contagion that cleared almost all lockdowns.
Now emails received by Swedish journalists under freedom of information laws have further contaminated the flames – apparently contradicting his earlier denials that he was deliberately seeking a rapid spread to gain herd immunity despite knowing the risks, according to The Guardian.
“One point would be to keep schools open to achieve rapid immunity,” he wrote during a brainstorming session in March with his Finnish colleague, Mika Salminen, days after COVID-19 was declared a pandemic.
He was warned that “children will still spread the infection to other age groups” and that closing schools could reduce the spread to vulnerable age groups by at least 10 percent, The Guardian said.
“Ten percent can it be worth it?” he replied, according to reports.
The released emails won outrage in the Scandinavian country, Yahoo! News notes – with other reports also suggested he had deleted hundreds of emails that were searched.
Despite the email, Tegnell argues that hunting immunity was not the real reason to keep schools open.
“My comment was on a possible effect, not on an expected one, that was part of the assessment of the appropriateness of the measure,” he told Emanuel Karlsten, the journalist who received the emails. “Keeping schools open to gain immunity was therefore never relevant.”
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