A Swedish professor of epidemiology has dropped out of COVID-19 research after facing a sharp backlash over his findings that the disease poses a low threat to children – undermining the political argument that schools cannot reopen.
Jonas Ludvigsson, a professor of clinical epidemiology at the Karolinska Institute, said he had lost sleep due to “angry messages via social media and e-mail” that stormed his study and partially accused him of Sweden’s counter-strategy COVID-19, College Fix reported.
His research has focused on children between the ages of 1 and 16 during the first wave of the pandemic last spring, including those with “laboratory-tested or clinically tested COVID-19, including patients who have been hospitalized for inflammatory syndrome. multisystem in children ”, because it is“ probably ”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 “a coexisting chronic condition” and none died.
In terms of teachers, “less than” 30 arrived in the ICU in the same period – a rate of about 19 per 100,000.
Ludvigsson also mentioned that the children did not wear face masks, while the rest of the Swedish citizens were simply “encouraged” to practice social distance.
Now, due to the reaction Ludvigsson has faced to his research, Sweden intends to increase the protection of academic freedom in law, according to College Fix.
Higher Education Minister Matilda Ernkrans told the British Medical Journal that the government intends to amend the Higher Education Act to ensure that “education and research must be protected to allow people to discover, research and share knowledge freely”.
Karolinska Institute President Ole Petter Ottersen told the newspaper that “accusations of hatred and contempt and personal attacks cannot be tolerated”, either against the pediatrician or other researchers who have “retired”.[ed] from the 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, went through several revisions and “formal external peer review,” including statistics.