Bloomberg Cites Non-Peer-Reviewed Data; Gets Burned by CDC Misinformation on Pediatric Deaths Due to COVID-19
A report of more deaths in children from COVID-19 than from influenza ignored the over-reporting "coding error" admitted by CDC. Bloomberg published it anyway.
Bloomberg’s overly dramatic article
Cited a fallacious article on “Inside Medicine Dot Com” scarily entitled “Delta and Omicron killed far more children than flu ever does”.
Both ignore CDC’s massive over-reporting glitch they admitted was due to a “coding error”.
This fact was pointed out by a stay-at-home parent studying surgical technology, Heather Winemiller, who commented:
In March of this year over 72,000 deaths were removed from Covid death toll, 416 of those were children, in what the CDC described as a “coding logic error.” This changes your narrative and in fact, makes a case that the flu is in fact more deadly in children than Covid ever was. The language used in this article is alarming and not really accurate. At 2 years in, the articles to drum up fear and unrest aren’t working anymore.”
Way to go, Heather.
Another commenter pointed to a British Medical Journal commentary by Jennifer Block confirming the error (See https://www.bmj.com/content/376/bmj.o831)
Covid-19: US tracker overestimated deaths among children
BMJ 2022; 376 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.o831 (Published 29 March 2022)Cite this as: BMJ 2022;376:o831
“The US’s health protection agency has reduced the number of deaths it is attributing to covid-19 by more than 70 000 after what it referred to as ‘coding logic errors’ were highlighted on social media.
On 15 March the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) removed 72 277 deaths, including those of 416 children, from its Covid-19 Data Tracker, which has been posting real time data collected from more than two dozen state health departments since April 2020.1”
The original offending article cited data up to Feb 2022, and CDC downgraded and corrected the number in March, 2022.
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I'm reminded of something from my marketing studies. To paraphrase: The inability of the subject to discern the truth once they've been anchored in a falsehood (presented as truth initially) is almost impossible. Even when the source of the falsehood is face to face with the subject telling them they made up the "Fact," the odds are that the subject will incorrectly remember the accurate/true fact even within a day or two of the initial anchor/correction point. Now that we are 2.5 years into this family funhouse of fear its no wonder they can't get it right, nor can they accept the initial anchor data as inaccurate/not true. This phenomenon is similar to the cognitive bias of Primacy - she who speaks first sets the anchor and whoever speaks next is S*it Out of Luck regardless of accuracy of the statement. Moral of the Story: Speak first and set the anchor. Dr. F-ouchie is a master at this.
There is a huge difference. I knew a 10 year old girl who died of the flu in 2015. It was horrible and I'm still reeling from it. When my own kids caught Flu B a few years ago right before the pandemic, I was vigil by their bedsides because of that earlier experience (they were sleepy but overall fine after a week). I've known many kids sick with covid and its a cold to them. They are better after 12 hours (unless they are jabbed, then its taking them longer). Fear mongering at its best