The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has made huge changes to the data it published on the number of children who died from COVID-19.
The corporate media has been using the same data to publish fear reports on the number of pediatric deaths from the coronavirus.
When the Omicron strain of the virus started to spread, the good news was that, while the new variant was more transmissible, it was less deadly.
However, establishment news outlets have been warning that Omicron might be more dangerous for children.
“One-third of all child deaths from Covid have happened in the past two months,” independent journalist Melody Schreiber tweeted on March 11.
“That’s staggering,” she added, along with a link to her story in the U.K. Guardian about the same.
This was based on the CDC’s published data, so it wasn’t false.
But the CDC has now made a massive adjustment to its data, citing a “coding logic error.”
According to a Washington Examiner, the reported pediatric COVID-19 deaths plummeted 24 percent after the CDC fixed the “error.”
The CDC’s data on Monday showed 1,755 deaths from COVID-19 among those under the age of 18.
While this may seem like a small portion of the nearly 1 million deaths from the disease in the U.S., 738 of these minors’ deaths occurred in the first 10 weeks of 2022.
Therefore, a third of all COVID-19 deaths among children happened over roughly 10 percent of the whole course of the pandemic.
The effect of Omicron on children had long been a matter of febrile speculation for the Left, the media, and even Supreme Court justices.
During oral arguments on Democrat President Joe Biden’s vaccine mandate, Justice Sonia Sotomayor remarked that there were “over 100,000 children [in hospitals], which we’ve never had before, in serious condition and many on ventilators.”
“We have hospitals that are almost at full capacity with people severely ill on ventilators,” she said regarding the impact of Omicron.
“We have over 100,000 children, which we’ve never had before, in serious condition and many on ventilators.”
LISTEN:
Here is Justice Sotomayor saying that "hospitals are almost all full capacity" and there are "over 100,000 children" hospitalized with covid "many on ventilators.
None of those things are true. Not even close. pic.twitter.com/MqWEL2UvJg
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) January 7, 2022
It is unclear where Sotomayor got the statistic that 100,000 children are in serious condition since it has no resemblance to reality.
The Washington Post’s “fact-checker” gave her four Pinocchios for the claim, which, according to the column’s rating system, constitutes a “whopper.”
“It’s important for Supreme Court justices to make rulings based on correct data,” fact-checker Glen Kessler noted.
“There has been a spike in pediatric cases with covid, even if the omicron variant appears less deadly.
“But Sotomayor during an oral argument offered a figure — 100,000 children in ‘serious condition … many on ventilators’ — that is absurdly high.
“She earns Four Pinocchios.”
In fact, the claim was so false, that Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director Rochelle Walensky was forced to fact-check her during an appearance on Fox News.
Speaking to “Fox News Sunday” host Bret Baier, Walensky clarified that there are fewer than 3,500 children in hospitals with COVID-19.
After playing an audio clip of the justice’s comments, Baier noted to Walensky that “what we can find from Friday suggest there are fewer than 3,500 current pediatric hospitalizations from COVID-19. Is that true?”
“Yeah,” she replied.
She continued by noting that “first of all, the vast majority of children who are in the hospital are unvaccinated, and for those children who are not eligible for vaccination, we do know that they are most likely to get sick with COVID if their family members aren’t vaccinated.”
She then went on to push vaccination for children before Baier interrupted her to confirm.
“Understood, but the number is not 100,000. It’s roughly 3,500 in hospitals now,” he said.
“It … yes, there are … there are,” Walensky replied.
“And in fact what I will say is, while pediatric hospitalizations are rising, there are still about 15-fold less than hospitalizations of our older age demographics.”
WATCH:
SOTOMAYOR: “Over 100,000 children" are hospitalized due to COVID, with "many on ventilators"
BRET BAIER: "The number's not 100,000. It's roughly 3,500 in hospitals now?"
WALENSKY: "Yes."
How did Sotomayor make it on the Supreme Court?pic.twitter.com/ANapx1MbCq
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) January 9, 2022
As Kessler noted, the number Sotomayor spouted off surpasses the total number of children hospitalized with COVID since August 2020, which is 82,843.
What’s more, these are children hospitalized with COVID, not necessarily from it.
Many children test positive after being hospitalized with other conditions, which Walensky acknowledged as well.
“In some hospitals that we’ve talked to, up to 40 percent of the patients who are coming in with COVID are coming in not because they’re sick with COVID but because they’re coming in with something else and have had COVID or the omicron variant detected,” she said.
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