A Swedish professor of epidemiology has stopped investigating COVID-19 after facing a fierce backlash over his findings that the disease poses a low threat to children, undermining the political argument that schools cannot return to to open.
Jonas Ludvigsson, a professor of clinical epidemiology at the Karolinska Institute, said he has lost sleep as a result of “messages of rage through social media and email” that attacked his study and that he blamed on part of Sweden’s opposing strategy COVID-19, the College Fix reported.
His research focused on children between the ages of 1 and 16 during the first wave of the pandemic last spring, including those with “laboratory-verified or clinically verified COVID-19, including patients admitted for multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children.” , because it is “likely” related to the error.
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 disease” and none died.
As for teachers, “less than” 30 ended up in the ICU during the same period, a rate of about 19 per 100,000.
Ludvigsson also noted that the children did not wear face masks, while the rest of the Swedish citizens were simply “encouraged” to practice social distancing.
Now, because of the reaction Ludvigsson faced during his research, Sweden plans to increase the protection of academic freedom in law, according to the Fix College.
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 to enable people to discover, research and share knowledge freely “
Karolinska Institute president Ole Petter Ottersen told the magazine that “hateful and despicable accusations and personal attacks cannot be tolerated,” either against the pediatrician or other researchers who “withdraw.”[ed] of public debate after being threatened or harassed “.
Ludvigsson said his letter to the editor, which was published in the Feb. 18 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, had gone through several revisions and “formal external peer reviews,” including statistics.