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Yesterday, whereas scrolling via my information feed, I ran throughout a reasonably alarming headline from NBC information. It declared that COVID hospitalizations amongst kids had been rising. That could be a very worrisome growth as a result of we’ve got lengthy been working on the idea that kids had been the least more likely to be contaminated with the novel coronavirus and, even when they had been, they have a tendency to expertise the least extreme signs. Also, many of the new circumstances are from the Omicron variant at this level, and that pressure is meant to be significantly “milder” to start with. But you don’t must dig all that far into the NBC article to seek out that the headline is greater than a bit disingenuous. First of all, the uncooked numbers they’re speaking about are removed from alarming.
In the final 4 weeks, the typical variety of kids hospitalized with Covid-19 jumped 52 p.c, from a low of 1,270 on Nov. 29 to 1,933 on Sunday, based on an NBC News evaluation of Department of Health and Human Services knowledge.
In the identical time interval, grownup Covid hospitalizations elevated 29 p.c, suggesting that pediatric hospitalizations rose at practically twice the speed.
I’m not going to sugarcoat this and say {that a} doubling of the variety of kids hospitalized with COVID isn’t disturbing (and the “with” is vital, as we’ll focus on in a second). But we’re speaking about 1,933 kids right here. That’s not 1,933 kids in one metropolis or one county and even one state. That’s in your complete nation of 330 million folks. And greater than 73 million of these Americans are underneath the age of 18. That works out to a hospitalization fee of .00000026.
The overblown nature of the headline is additional revealed in NBC’s interviews with medical specialists and a better have a look at the definitions they’re utilizing. They spoke with Dr. Paul Offit, a vaccine professional at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. He began off by saying that COVID is a winter virus and it was “inevitable” that we might see extra circumstances throughout this season. But then he utterly contradicted the premise of the article with a quote that shocked me a lot that I blasted it out on Twitter final evening. (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 stated, his hospital has seen a number of children take a look at constructive for Covid with out essentially displaying signs 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 stated.
Yes, you learn that appropriately. Following the steering of the CDC, hospitals are actually testing just about everybody who’s admitted for any motive for COVID, together with kids. And they’re reporting the overall quantity of people that take a look at constructive. What which means, as is lastly made clear on the finish of the article, is that the numbers being reported mirror the overall variety of kids who examined constructive when being admitted to the hospital it doesn’t matter what they had been admitted for.
That “doubling” of the variety of kids admitted to hospitals wasn’t the variety of children who had been hospitalized for COVID, It’s the quantity that had been hospitalized with COVID, irrespective of the explanation for the hospitalization. If your child has a sniffly nostril however then breaks her leg whereas snow sledding in the again yard and you are taking her to the hospital, when she exams constructive for COVID upon admission, she will get added to that whole determine being cited by NBC News.
In brief, it doesn’t seem that there’s a sudden explosion of kids being struck down by the Omicron variant and needing to be hospitalized due to it. In reality, it seems to be fairly the alternative.
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