A Swedish professor of epidemiology has stopped researching COVID-19 after facing fierce criticism of his findings that the disease poses a low threat to children – thereby undermining the political argument that schools cannot reopen.
Jonas Ludvigsson, a professor of clinical epidemiology at the Karolinska Institute, said he has lost sleep as a result of the “ angry social media and email messages ” that attacked his study, partially blaming him for the rebellious COVID-19 strategy of Sweden, the College Fix reported.
His study focused on children aged 1 to 16 years during the first wave of the pandemic last spring, including children with “laboratory-verified or clinically-verified COVID-19, including patients admitted for multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children” because it was “likely”. is. related to the bug.
Only 15 children went to the ICU – a rate of 0.77 per 100,000, according to the report. Four had “an underlying chronic coexisting condition” and none of them died.
As for the teachers, over the same period “less than” 30 ended up in IC, about 19 per 100,000.
Ludvigsson also noted that children did not wear face masks, while the rest of Swedish citizens were simply “encouraged” to practice social aloofness.
Now, because of the backlash Ludvigsson faced with his research, Sweden plans to strengthen the protection of academic freedom in law, the College Fix said.
Higher Education Minister Matilda Ernkrans told the British Medical Journal that the government plans to amend the Higher Education Act to ensure that “education and research must be protected so that people can freely discover, research and share knowledge”.
Ole Petter Ottersen, president of the Karolinska Institute, told the magazine that “hateful and disdainful accusations and personal assaults cannot be tolerated,” be it the pediatrician or other investigators who have “withdrawn”.[ed] from the public debate after they were threatened or harassed. “
Ludvigsson said his letter to the editor, published in the Feb. 18 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, had undergone several revisions and “formal external peer review,” statistically as well.