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NBC News announces surge in child COVID hospitalizations, but...
Hot Air.com ^ | December 29, 2021 | JAZZ SHAW

Posted on 12/29/2021 5:58:22 AM PST by Kaslin

Yesterday, while scrolling through my news feed, I ran across a rather alarming headline from NBC news. It declared that COVID hospitalizations among children were rising. That would be a particularly worrisome development because we have long been operating on the assumption that children were the least likely to be infected with the novel coronavirus and, even if they were, they tend to experience the least severe symptoms. Also, most of the new cases are from the Omicron variant at this point, and that strain is supposed to be considerably “milder” to begin with. But you don’t have to dig all that far into the NBC article to find that the headline is more than a little disingenuous. First of all, the raw numbers they are talking about are far from alarming.

In the last four weeks, the average number of children hospitalized with Covid-19 jumped 52 percent, from a low of 1,270 on Nov. 29 to 1,933 on Sunday, according to an NBC News analysis of Department of Health and Human Services data.

In the same time period, adult Covid hospitalizations increased 29 percent, suggesting that pediatric hospitalizations rose at nearly twice the rate.I’m not going to sugarcoat this and say that a doubling of the number of children hospitalized with COVID isn’t disturbing (and the “with” is important, as we’ll discuss in a moment). But we’re talking about 1,933 children here. That’s not 1,933 children in one city or one county or even one state. That’s in the entire country of 330 million people. And more than 73 million of those Americans are under the age of 18. That works out to a hospitalization rate of .00000026.

The overblown nature of the headline is further revealed in NBC’s interviews with medical experts and a closer look at the definitions they are using. They spoke with Dr. Paul Offit, a vaccine expert at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. He started off by saying that COVID is a winter virus and it was “inevitable” that we would see more cases during this season. But then he completely contradicted the premise of the article with a quote that shocked me so much that I blasted it out on Twitter last night. (Emphasis added)

The @NBCNews headline: "Child Covid hospitalizations are up, especially in 5 states"

Way down in the article… pic.twitter.com/zj0JLohf4S

— Jazz Shaw (@JazzShaw) December 28, 2021

However, he said, his hospital has seen a lot of kids test positive for Covid without necessarily showing symptoms or getting sick.

“We test anybody who’s admitted to the hospital for whatever reason to see whether or not they have Covid, and we’re definitely seeing an increase in cases. However, we’re really not seeing an increase in children who are hospitalized for Covid or in the intensive care unit for Covid,” Offit said.

Yes, you read that correctly. Following the guidance of the CDC, hospitals are now testing virtually everyone who is admitted for any reason for COVID, including children. And they are reporting the total number of people who test positive. What that means, as is finally made clear at the end of the article, is that the numbers being reported reflect the total number of children who tested positive when being admitted to the hospital no matter what they were admitted for.

That “doubling” of the number of children admitted to hospitals wasn’t the number of kids who were hospitalized for COVID, It’s the number that were hospitalized with COVID, no matter the reason for the hospitalization. If your kid has a sniffly nose but then breaks her leg while snow sledding in the back yard and you take her to the hospital, when she tests positive for COVID upon admission, she gets added to that total figure being cited by NBC News.

In short, it does not appear that there is a sudden explosion of children being struck down by the Omicron variant and needing to be hospitalized because of it. In fact, it appears to be quite the opposite.



TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial
KEYWORDS: children; covid19; deceit; nbcnews; omicronvariant
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To: Kaslin

This is nauseating. This is like the Soviet Union that we learned about in grade school in the 50s.


21 posted on 12/29/2021 6:48:35 AM PST by ChildOfThe60s (If you can remember the 60s.....you weren't really there..)
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To: Kaslin

NBC declared that COVID hospitalizations among children were rising.

Of course it did. Pfizer and Moderna told them to say that.


22 posted on 12/29/2021 6:54:31 AM PST by maddog55 (The only thing systemic in America is the left's hatred of it!)
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To: Kaslin

Of course, they’re lying, that’s what the government and the media do. If they had their way, they would close down the internet altogether, and take us back to the days of just 3 networks that would make their lying easier to get away with.


23 posted on 12/29/2021 6:54:52 AM PST by euram
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To: Kaslin

The culprit is clearly the test, but some Freepers will still blame the vaccine.


24 posted on 12/29/2021 6:56:13 AM PST by Socon-Econ (adi)
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To: Kaslin
I really miss Rush!

He is the megaphone needed in these times.

Nobody today can give this the coverage it needs.

25 posted on 12/29/2021 7:10:28 AM PST by G Larry (The "Racism" charge is code for "No Intelligent Argument")
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To: Abathar

That is the epitome of selfishness on the part of the in-laws.
Prayers for your grandson Abathar.


26 posted on 12/29/2021 7:37:11 AM PST by Oorang (Politicians:-a feeble band of lowly reptiles who shun the light and who lurk in their own dens. )
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To: Kaslin

How To Lie With Statistics.

The media is very good at this.

The public is not very good at seeing through this, especially when the lie is shouted at them 24/7 on the idiot tube.


27 posted on 12/29/2021 7:57:58 AM PST by Deo volente ("When we see the image of a baby in the womb, we glimpse the majesty of God's creation." Pres. Trump)
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To: mewzilla
And kids in with vaxx-related injuries being coded as the coof.

At $13,000 a pop that the government gives them courtesy of our taxpayer money.

Not that I'm saying hospitals and doctors would do something so underhanded and sleazy for easy money as to fluff the numbers. (I am totally saying hospitals and doctors are sleazy easy money grubbers).

28 posted on 12/29/2021 8:02:11 AM PST by Sirius Lee (They intend to murder us. Prep if you want to live and live like you are prepping for eternal life)
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To: Kaslin

Wonder how many people died going to hospitals compared to those who didn’t.

Also,has anyone proven that the jab has saved any lives?


29 posted on 12/29/2021 8:08:44 AM PST by Leep (Freedom: "What's the big deal" -joe biden)
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To: Oorang

Thanks, trust me they’ve been non-stop since this whole thing started.


30 posted on 12/29/2021 8:15:33 AM PST by Abathar (Proudly posting without reading the article carefully since 2004)
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To: Kaslin

The holidays and traveling around the past couple of weeks have given me the unpleasant opportunity to see the mainstream media more than my fair share. Every time I see fear porn statistics from these POSs it becomes obvious that they withhold some fact that gives perspective to their stats. Everyone should demand the raw numbers so they can understand what all this means. For instance, if one child was hospitalized last week and then a second child is hospitalized, you have a 100% percent increase in child hospitalizations. That sounds terrible if you don’t know the raw numbers, but it is only two children out of millions - essentially zero. By the way, it is not insensitive to children to damn their figures. They use statistics to make their argument. They are lying and that is what is to be damned, along with the abuse of millions of other children have suffered from the lies have told.


31 posted on 12/29/2021 8:21:02 AM PST by ConservativeInPA ("Goats are like mushrooms. Because if you shoot a duck, I'm afraid of toasters." - Joe Biden)
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To: Kaslin

Forces of evil are behind this.


32 posted on 12/29/2021 9:16:40 PM PST by imabadboy99
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