SATIRE (unless it isn't)
THE HOAX FILES · 43
Off by 837,000 Children
Off by 837,000 kids. A rounding error the size of a city.
New York Times
The New York Times said nearly 900,000 kids had been hospitalized with COVID. The real number was about 63,000.
As printed on the graphic:
The 900,000 Kids Hospitalized with Coronavirus Hoax
What they sold
October 2021, in the middle of the fight over vaccine mandates and school masking. A New York Times article said nearly 900,000 American children had been hospitalized with COVID since the pandemic began. This one belongs to the Times. FNN found no evidence CNN reported the figure.
What the record shows
The Times' own correction, October 8, 2021: the correct figure was more than 63,000 children hospitalized from August 2020 to October 2021. That's an error of more than 800,000 children, more than fourteen times too high. The same correction fixed other mistakes in the piece, about Sweden's and Denmark's decisions on the Moderna vaccine and the timing of an FDA meeting on the Pfizer vaccine for children (Reason/Volokh, Fox News).
Hedge: 63,000 hospitalized kids is not nothing, and every one of those cases was real. But a number that wrong, on the most charged policy question of the moment, should never have survived an editor.
The damage
FNN analysis: parents were making real decisions about school, masks and vaccines. A fourteen-fold error pointed one way, toward fear. Corrections get a fraction of the readers the original does. Gallup's 2021 trust: 36%.
Closer
Off by 837,000 kids. In the paper of record. Correct it on the front page next time.