Africa News Quick

Lindsey Kornick on Fox News reported The Texas Tribune, a left-leaning Texas outlet, published a report warning “Texas children’s and children’s hospitals are under siege from two viruses: RSV and COVID-19 “.

Initially, the Tribune included the terrifying statistic that 5,800 children in Texas were hospitalized with COVID over the course of seven days in early August. This was enthusiastically rejected by left-wing bloggers like Jen Rubin from The Washington Post.

“Unconscious: More than 5,800 children in Texas were recently hospitalized with COVID-19 in the seven-day period ending August 8, a 37% increase from the previous week. Where is the pro-life movement? It is now a cult of death, “Rubin tweeted.

There is only one problem. The numbers were far.

The correction was first noticed by Bloomberg reporter Steven Dennis.

“An earlier version of this story exaggerated the number of children who have been hospitalized in Texas recently with COVID-19. The story says that more than 5,800 children had been hospitalized over a seven-day period in August, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Disease and Prevention. That number correctly referred to children hospitalized with COVID-19 since the pandemic began. In fact, 783 children were admitted to Texas hospitals with COVID-19 between July 1 and August 9, this year “.

“That’s a great correction,” Dennis tweeted. He added that “people need to get better at math. They should have a statistics course in every high school and every high school.”

That is a great correction. https://t.co/UBBgV0OXXm pic.twitter.com/uhxkYABwR3

– Steven Dennis (@StevenTDennis) August 12, 2021

So for five weeks there were 783 children, not 5,800 for one week. Brent Scher, executive editor of the Washington Free Beacon, tweeted about bad math: “I did the math here. The claim: 828 hospitalizations per day Reality: 19 per day. Only with about 43x.“No wonder Jen Rubin deleted her tweet!

Skeptics pointed to the slippery language of the Tribune’s correction. Not “hospitalized with COVID” but “admitted to Texas hospitals with COVID.” So they weren’t a measure of how serious their admissions were, for how many days they stayed.

Once again, people who think they represent science have screwed up the real numbers and grossly exaggerated the problem. Creating a viral tweet seems to get ahead of basic math.

PS: Rubin wrote an editorial on the same point on the same day as the The “MAGA governors” are putting lives in danger:

The worst perpetrators of this preventable tragedy are not misplaced wackos like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia); In fact, they are among the top contenders for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. Not all Republicans outlaw mask or vaccine mandates, but all governors who do (in Arizona, Arkansas, Iowa, Oklahoma, Florida, Carolina, South, Texas and Utah) are Republicans.

This is certainly not a “pro-life” party. Across the country, large numbers of Americans have discovered what these political tricks are doing: sacrificing the health and lives of Americans on the altar of their political ambition.