Last week, during a session of the Supreme Court regarding President Joe Biden's vaccine mandate for employers, Justice Sonia Sotomayor shared markedly inaccurate statistics regarding COVID-19 and its effect on children in the US.
Sotomayor spoke of the effects of COVID on children in the US and inflated facts about the number of cases, the type of treatment, and more during her portion of the oral arguments in the court's session. "Those numbers show that omicron is as deadly and causes as much serious disease in the unvaccinated as delta did. We have over 100,000 children, which we've never had before, in serious condition and many on ventilators," said Sotomayor.
The CDC reports that the current number of pediatric hospitalizations is just under 3,500 late last week.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 82,843 children ages 0-17 have been admitted to the hospital with COVID-19 since August 1, 2020. However, the CDC's number does not distinguish between children admitted to the hospital because of COVID-19 and children admitted to the hospital who subsequently tested positive for COVID-19.
There continues to be some contradiction over information regarding COVID-19 statistics and impacts in the US.
On Fox News Sunday, anchor Bret Baier prompted CDC Director Rochelle Walensky to point out that Justice Sotomayor was offering inaccurate information during the oral arguments. However, Walensky stuck to her talking points about the importance of getting kids vaccinated.
Walensky did not directly address the misinformation, sticking to the CDC's narrative of vaccines for children instead.
Bret Baier directly asked Walensky, "And do you feel responsibility as the CDC director to correct a very big mischaracterization by one of the Supreme Court justices?"
"Yeah, here's what I'll tell you. I'll tell you that, right now, 17 — if you're unvaccinated, you're 17 times more likely to be in the hospital and 20 times more likely to die than if you're boosted," Walensky replied.
