No Deaths Reported In Sweden's School Children Despite Schools Remaining Open Throughout Year

ZERO School Children Died Of COVID In Sweden During The ‘First Wave’ Despite Schools Being Open – Leading Academic Quits After Intimidation And Threats For His Findings

Arjun Walia 

A letter to the editor published in the New England Journal of Medicine titled “Open Schools, Covid-19, and Child and Teacher Morbidity in Sweden” has found that:

“Despite Sweden’s having kept schools and preschools open, we found a low incidence of severe Covid-19 among school children and children of preschool age during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic… No child with Covid-19 died… Among the 1,951,905 million children who were 1 to 16 years of age, 15 children had Covid-19, MIS-C, or both conditions and were admitted to an ICU, which is equal to 1 child in 130,000.”

It was published by Jonas F Ludvigsson a paediatrician at Örebro University Hospital and professor of clinical epidemiology at the Karolinska Institute.

The study also showed that “fewer than 10 preschool teachers and 20 schoolteachers in Sweden received intensive care for Covid-19 up until June 30, 2020 (20 per 103,596 school teachers, which is equal to 19 per 100,000).

In a Karolinska Institute press release, Ludvigsson indicated he was hopeful about the results.

“It is very gratifying that serious COVID-19, defined here as needing treatment in an intensive care unit, is so rare among children despite schools being open during the pandemic,” he said.

After he published this piece, an article published in the British Medical Journal on the 18th of February by Ingrid Torjesen states the following:

The Swedish government has said that it will strengthen laws on academic freedom after a leading Swedish academic announced that he was quitting his work on covid-19 because of an onslaught of intimidating comments from people who disagreed or disliked his research findings….

After the letter’s publication he was bombarded with angry messages through social media and email criticising the study and inferring that it and Ludvigsson were representative of the country’s covid-19 containment strategy.

The experience has taken its toll on Ludvigsson. He told the journal of the Swedish Medical Association (Lakartidningen) that for a week he woke up at 3 am every night and could not get back to sleep and that he had now lost his appetite for covid-19—both when it comes to speaking out and researching. He has decided to quit researching and debating covid-19.

Matilda Ernkrans, Sweden’s minister for higher education and research, told The BMJ:

“It is deeply concerning when academics are threatened to the extent that they don’t have the courage to keep on doing their job.

“This is not a new phenomenon, but we have seen an increase of threats against academics related to research on the coronavirus. When people are silenced, it’s a threat against the freedom of speech and our democracy.

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