{"id":65927,"date":"2021-03-18T09:40:30","date_gmt":"2021-03-18T15:40:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=65927"},"modified":"2021-03-18T09:40:30","modified_gmt":"2021-03-18T15:40:30","slug":"65927","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=65927","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

Professor quits researching COVID because of hostility over his findings about low threat to children.<\/a><\/p>\n

Read the\u00a0NEJM<\/em>\u00a0letter<\/a>,\u00a0BMJ<\/em>\u00a0report<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0University World News<\/em>\u00a0report.<\/a><\/p>\n

Jonas Ludvigsson undermined the political argument that schools couldn\u2019t reopen in person with his research findings about COVID-19\u2019s negligible threat to children and minor threat to teachers.<\/p>\n

The professor of clinical epidemiology at Sweden\u2019s Karolinska Institute faced such hostility for his findings, published in the\u00a0New England Journal of Medicine<\/em>, that he\u2019s now given up on researching COVID-19, much less debating it.<\/p>\n

Ludvigsson\u2019s comments to the Swedish Medical Association were translated from Swedish by\u00a0The British Medical Journal<\/em><\/a>. He said that he hasn\u2019t been able to sleep more than a few hours for a week as a result of the \u201cangry messages through social media and email\u201d criticizing his study and partly blaming him for Sweden\u2019s contrarian COVID-19 strategy.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

His letter to the editor,\u00a0first published<\/a>\u00a0Jan. 6 and listed in the\u00a0Feb. 18 issue<\/a>\u00a0of\u00a0NEJM<\/em>,\u00a0went through several revisions and\u00a0 \u201cformal external peer review,\u201d including statistically, before it was published, Ludvigsson told the association.<\/p>\n

The pediatrician\u2019s research focused on children from age 1 to 16 during the first wave of COVID-19 last spring, tracking admissions to intensive care units March 1-June 30. It included those with \u201claboratory-verified or clinically verified Covid-19, including patients who were admitted for multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children\u201d because it\u2019s \u201clikely\u201d related to COVID-19.<\/p>\n

Just 15 children went to the ICU, for a rate of 0.77 per 100,000. Four had \u201can underlying chronic coexisting condition (cancer in 2, chronic kidney disease in 1, and hematologic disease in 1),\u201d and none died. As for teachers, \u201cfewer than\u201d 10 in preschool and 20 in school went to the ICU during the same period. The schoolteacher ICU rate was about 19 in 100,000.<\/p>\n

Relevant to school reopening debates across the globe, Ludvigsson notes that children weren\u2019t wearing face masks. As with the rest of Swedish society, they were simply \u201cencouraged\u201d to practice social distancing.<\/p>\n

Deaths from any cause in the 1-16 age group only slightly budged from the four-month period before the pandemic to the four-month period after \u2013 from 65 to 69.<\/p>\n

Sweden is planning to boost academic freedom protections in law in part as a result of Ludvigsson\u2019s experience, though it\u2019s unclear what will change.<\/p>\n

Higher education minister Matilda Ernkrans told\u00a0The BMJ\u00a0<\/em>the government is planning to amend the Higher Education Act to ensure \u201cthat education and research must be protected to enable people to freely discover, research, and share knowledge.\u201d<\/p>\n

Academics have faced \u201can increase of threats\u201d related to research on the novel coronavirus: \u201cWhen people are silenced, it\u2019s a threat against the freedom of speech and our democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n

The president of Ludvigsson\u2019s institute, Ole Petter Ottersen, told the journal that \u201chateful and scornful accusations and personal attacks cannot be tolerated,\u201d whether against the pediatrician or other researchers who have \u201cretreat[ed] from the public debate after being threatened or harassed.\u201d<\/p>\n

He called on university leaders to urge their researchers to \u201ckeep a decent tone in debates and discussions\u201d so that their peers aren\u2019t bullied into silence and away from controversial research.<\/p>\n

University World News<\/em><\/a>\u00a0reported in November that university leaders and academic organizations across Scandinavia were pushing academic freedom legislation \u201camid rising concern that academic freedom is being eroded around the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sweden was reviewing responses to a May \u201cconsultation\u201d on its proposal to \u201cre-introduce academic freedom in university law as of 1 July 2021 if endorsed by parliament.\u201d<\/p>\n

The government warned that the \u201cindependent and critical\u201d role of universities in society was under threat, \u201cbecause they are regarded as contradicting the values of those in power.\u201d A Swedish government study in 2018 found \u201c21 out of 26 universities said that there is a risk that researchers will be exposed to harassment, threats and violence.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Professor quits researching COVID because of hostility over his findings about low threat to children. Read the\u00a0NEJM\u00a0letter,\u00a0BMJ\u00a0report\u00a0and\u00a0University World News\u00a0report. Jonas Ludvigsson undermined the political argument that schools couldn\u2019t reopen in person with his research findings about COVID-19\u2019s negligible threat to children and minor threat to teachers. The professor of clinical epidemiology at Sweden\u2019s Karolinska Institute … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-65927","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health-medicine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65927","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=65927"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65927\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65928,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65927\/revisions\/65928"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=65927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=65927"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=65927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}