The New York Times had to issue a correction after it overstated, aka lied, about the very serious topic of children hospitalized due to COVID-19. The number was misreported by an astounding 800,000.
The Times reported “nearly 900,000 children have been hospitalized” with COVID since the pandemic began in an article titled “A New Vaccine Strategy for Children: Just One Dose, for Now.”
The Times attempted to push vaccination for children by grossly misrepresenting the number of children becoming so ill they need to be hospitalized. The now-corrected version states “63,000 children were hospitalized with Covid-19 from August 2020 to October 2021.”
The article was written by Times science and health reporter Apoorva Mandavilli who also misstated the timing of an FDA meeting authorizing the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for children.
Mandavilli’s full correction, a lengthy one, reads:
An earlier version of this article incorrectly described actions taken by regulators in Sweden and Denmark. They have halted use of the Moderna vaccine in children; they have not begun offering single doses. The article also misstated the number of Covid hospitalizations in U.S. children. It is more than 63,000 from August 2020 to October 2021, not 900,000 since the beginning of the pandemic. In addition the article misstated the timing of an F.D.A. meeting on authorization of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for children.
Journalist Glenn Greenwald called out the reporter, noting Mandavilli had once stated a “lab-leak” theory of the coronavirus pandemic had “racist roots.”
Fox News writes “many observers also mocked the paper for printing that Mandavilli ‘is the 2019 winner of the Victor Cohn Prize for Excellence in Medical Science Reporting’ directly below the correction.”
Rutgers University professor Richard H. Ebright said the award has basically “devolved to being an award for diligence in groupthink and virtue signaling.”