More irresponsible COVID panic porn

Vincent J. Curtis

31 Dec 21

RE: COVID infections among kids in U.S. see record surge.  AP story written by Martha Bellisle and Terry Tang.  Published in the Hamilton Spectator 31 Dec 21.

Once again, we see the media pushing COVID panic porn with sensational headlines and verbiage, “record numbers,” “experts lament,” “cases rocketing,” “heartbreaking,” “the scenes are heartrending. They’re struggling to breathe,” and so forth.  It is a fact that kids are at greater risk of death from seasonal influenza than they are from COVID, so let’s review the story in this light, understanding that the slant of the story is to push the vaccination of kids.

After the setting the stage with lamentations, the story quotes that 337 children were admitted per day, the week of Dec 21-27, a 58 percent increase from the week before.  This is in a country of 330 million people with a terrible, uncontrolled immigration problem.  How many of these the kids are illegal immigrants? Doesn’t say.  Nevertheless, admissions are less than the record 342 per day in September, you eventually find out deeper in the story.  This is when 9400 persons per day total were admitted nation-wide.

We also find buried in paragraph 52 that two-thirds of the children admitted had underlying conditions, such as chronic lung disease or obesity.  And the writer ties this suffering to a lack of vaccination of the kids and the parents, as if unvaccinated parents who didn’t have the disease stupidly and inadvertently were the cause of their child’s suffering.  Because they hadn’t vaccinated them.

There are always outliers in medicine, and in a nation of 330 million you’re bound to find numbers that look big.  But COVID is not dangerous to healthy children, seasonal influenza is more deadly than COVID.  We don’t vaccinate kids or close schools because of seasonal flu, so consistency requires the same course for a less dangerous contagion.

Get off the vaccinate kids kick.  Very few actually need it.

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