A Swedish professor of epidemiology stopped researching COVID-19 after facing a violent reaction against his findings that the disease poses a low threat to children – undermining the political argument that schools cannot reopen.
Jonas Ludvigsson, professor of clinical epidemiology at the Karolinska Institute, said he lost sleep as a result of “anger messages via social media and e-mail” that attacked his study and blamed him in part for the counter strategy of Sweden’s COVID-19 , the College Fix reported.
Her research focused on children aged 1 to 16 years old during the first wave of the pandemic last spring, including those with “COVID-19 verified in the lab or clinically, including patients who were hospitalized for multisystemic inflammatory syndrome in children” because it is “likely “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 coexisting chronic condition” and none died.
Regarding teachers, “less than” 30 ended up in the ICU in the same period – a rate of around 19 per 100,000.
Ludvigsson also noted that children did not wear masks, while the rest of Swedish citizens were simply “encouraged” to practice social detachment.
Now, due to the reaction that Ludvigsson faced in his research, Sweden plans to increase protection of academic freedom in the law, according to College Fix.
Higher Education Minister Matilda Ernkrans told the British Medical Journal that the government is planning to amend the Higher Education Act to ensure “that education and research are protected to allow people to discover, research and share knowledge freely”.
The president of the Karolinska Institute, Ole Petter Ottersen, told the newspaper that “hateful and contemptuous accusations and personal attacks cannot be tolerated”, whether against pediatricians or other researchers who have “setback”[ed] public debate after being threatened or harassed. “
Ludvigsson said his letter to the editor, published in the February 18 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, went through several reviews and “formal peer review”, including statistically.