Despite open schools, no masks, no social distancing, no children died of COVID-19 in Sweden

The following is a letter written by Jonas F. Ludvigsson and Emma Larsson from Karolinska Institutet, Lars Engerstrom of Vrinnevi Hospital, and Charlotte Nordenhall of the Swedish Association of Pediatric Rheumatology to the editor of The New England Journal of Medicine. In the letter, the authors detailed how they followed children with laboratory and clinically verified COVID-19, including those admitted for multisystem inflammatory syndrome (MIS-C), and who were admitted to the ICU between March 1 and June 30, 2020 to determine their clinical outcomes.

According to their study, 65 children died of various causes in the months of November 2019 to February 2020 (the authors referred to these months as pre-COVID). Meanwhile, 69 children died from March to June 2020, but none of these children were with COVID. Of the children who had COVID-19 and MIS-C, 15 were admitted to the ICU. Four of the children were aged 1 to 6 years while 11 were 7 to 16 years. Four of those who required ICU care had underlying chronic conditions.

Editor’s Note: The data from Sweden confirms to us what we have known all along – children do not need to be subjected to lockdowns and severe COVID-19 restrictions because SARS-CoV-2 poses little to no risk to their age group [this is a well documented, universal truth, see CDC updates planning scenarios, shows IFR lower than flu]. Owing to this finding, we must reiterate: primary and secondary schools should re-open with no restrictions. Our children should be allowed to resume their lives and continue learning. There is no science that supports school closures, and to make matters worse, its impacts are long-lasting [even the WHO says that schools should be reopened, see WHO: Closure of schools should be considered only if there is no other alternative. Also see New York Times: Schools need to stay open].