Dr. Anthony Fauci provided some insight regarding the accuracy of metrics used for counting positive COVID-19 cases in children. On Wednesday night, Fauci told MSNBC’s Ayman Mohyeldin that since all children are tested for COVID-19 when they enter a hospital, regardless of the reason they are there, that many children are hospitalized “with COVID” rather than “because of COVID.” Because of that, some COVID-19 cases can be “over counted,” Fauci said.
Keen observers would note that many people skeptical of the official COVID-19 count have argued that exact scenario was happening for quite some time.
As The Washington Examiner reported, Fauci told Moheyldin that childhood COVID-19 cases were rising for a number of reasons, but that doesn’t necessarily mean cause for alarm.
“First of all, quantitatively, you’re having so many more people, including children, who are getting infected. And even though hospitalization among children is much, much lower on a percentage basis than hospitalizations for adults, particularly elderly individuals,” Fauci told the guest host filling in for MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, “when you have such a large volume of infections among children, even with a low level of rate of infection, you’re going to still see a lot more children who get hospitalized.”
“But the other important thing is that if you look at the children who are hospitalized, many of them are hospitalized with COVID as opposed to because of COVID,” Fauci added. “And what we mean by that — if a child goes in the hospital, they automatically get tested for COVID. And they get counted as a COVID-hospitalized individual. When in fact, they may go in for a broken leg or appendicitis or something like that. So it’s over-counting the number of children who are, quote, ‘hospitalized with COVID,’ as opposed to because of COVID.”
Andy Swan flagged that clip Thursday evening, and sarcastically tweeted, “Fauci regurgitates CONSPIRACY THEORY that ‘hospitalizations’ data is bullshit because most people are in WITH COVID, not FROM COVID.”
Fauci regurgitates CONSPIRACY THEORY that “hospitalizations” data is bullshit because most people are in WITH COVID, not FROM COVID. pic.twitter.com/hZBPa40klC
— Andy Swan (@AndySwan) December 30, 2021
“It is absolutely amazing to watch the EXPERTS! class say word-for-word what the banned ‘conspiracy theorists’ were trying to communicate for the past 20 months,” Swan added.
“If you ever wondered if they were lying the whole time, this video puts any good faith claim to rest,” Mike Cernovich opined.
If you ever wondered if they were lying the whole time, this video puts any good faith claim to rest.
“With Covid,” not “because of” Covid.
— Cernovich (@Cernovich) December 31, 2021
Even in May of this year, researchers at Stanford stated that people were vastly overestimating childhood COVID-19 cases for the exact same reasons that Fauci laid out Wednesday. Fauci — of course — made no mention that over-counting COVID-19 cases was not a novel idea and that others had theorized this was happening before.
A reasonable assumption could be made that if hospitals are doing this for children — and failing to differentiate between patients “with COVID” vs. patients in the hospital “because of COVID” — then it is possible they are doing this for adults as well.
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.