Why did Frontiers publish a flawed study massively exaggerating Covid risk to children?

<Note: Before publishing this article we sent it to the Editors of Frontiers in Pediatrics asking if they wished to correct any inaccuracies or provide any updates, giving them several days to respond. They did not acknowledge or respond.>

In September 2021 Frontiers in Pediatrics published this article by members of the Indonesian Pediatrician Association (IDAI) claiming that the case fatality rate (CFR) for children with ‘suspected’ Covid in Indonesia was 1.4% (i.e. 1 in 71) with a CFR of 0.46% (1 in 217) for those with ‘confirmed’ Covid. No such high Covid fatality rates for children have been observed elsewhere in the world. In fact, worldwide the infection fatality rate was estimated (at the time the IDAI paper was published) to be 1 in 37,000  for those aged under 20.

The IDAI authors also made the startingly claim that, of the 175 ‘confirmed Covid deaths’ of children in their study, 62 had no existing comorbidities.  But again,  elsewhere in the world cases of covid death in children without serious comorbidities are almost unheard of. For example, in the UK in the whole of 2020,  a deep analysis of ALL child deaths with Covid (there were 28 in total) revealed only 8 were confirmed as likely caused by Covid and that all 8 had a comorbidity recorded, seven of whom had a life-limiting condition.  

An article by Ted Hilbert written shortly after the IDAI article was published highlighted the major problems with the study.  While the claims in the paper were startling, in June 2021 the IDAI (through its chairman) exaggerated the paper’s findings even further, claiming to the media that Indonesia has the highest child mortality rate (CFR) in the world, 3% to 5%. This article  provides the full details of the obviously fraudulent claim and includes the police report that was filed in response.

However, the massively exaggerated claim was used by IDAI to justify vaccinating children in Indonesia, and indeed a recommendation letter from IDAI to the government, based on the flawed study and claims about it, has been used as the main justification by the Indonesian government to issue the EUA and related policies for vaccinating children.

In the paper, the IDAI authors did not provide the raw data from which their conclusions were drawn, so Hilbert wrote to them requesting it. He received no reply (despite a statement by the authors that “The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be made available by the authors, without undue reservation”) and so wrote to the Editors of Frontiers on 23 Oct 2021 to request the data. The Editors finally replied on 11 Nov 2021 stating that they would contact the authors requesting the data and finally on 30 Nov 2021 the “Research Integrity Specialist” at Frontiers sent this link to the data.

After analysing the data with other experts including pathologists, a group of authors wrote an 8-page detailed response to Frontiers on 15 Dec 2021 pointing out multiple flaws in the study and inaccuracies in the data.

Hilbert has been promised several times that a review by the editors will take place but (as of today 14 July 2022) this has never happened despite several follow up requests by Hilbert.  The paper, with its flawed conclusions that have led to Indonesia’s child vaccine policy, remains published and unchanged.

It is worth pointing out that Frontiers can hardly be accused of not responding to complaints about papers on Covid treatments. But it seems only complaints against papers showing benefits of alternative treatments are taken seriously. In May 2021 Frontiers in Pharmacology published an abstract of a study by Pierre Kory on ivermectin for COVID-19 that had passed peer review with an expert panel of reviewers including senior reviewers from the FDA; but shortly before the full paper was due to be published in a special issue edited by Robert Malone - it was pulled due to a third-party complaint,with no chance for resubmission.