FOX & Friends host Ainsley Earhardt expressed “shock” upon hearing that children are getting COVID-19 in alarming numbers, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Said Earhardt (via Media Matters): “We're all worried about sending our kids back to school. What is that going to look like for our country, and for our elderly grandparents and things like that? 97,000 kids have tested positive. We all… that was such a shock to me, because I had heard kids really don't get it, if they do they're all going to be OK. Do you know any details about that, those — that percentage of kids that did get it? Are they all doing OK, do you have any deaths?”
Replied Kathuria: “I don't know about the mortality and morbidity right now in that group. You know, that was just in two weeks, so about 100,000 new cases in pediatric kids just in two weeks. And I can guarantee you that number is actually much higher. We don't really test kids that often. They're usually asymptomatic, they have very mild symptoms, but they're still shedding this virus. So that is going to artificially be low, no matter how good we are about testing right now. So, you know, that's what we're worried about right now, is sending these kids to schools and sending them home. And it's not the kids so much we're concerned about. Obviously, we are, but it's their grandparents, their parents, when their parents then go to work, who they're spreading this to.”
The Daily Beast adds: “Of course, Earhardt, who could be considered some sort of journalist, was apparently unaware of these basic facts. Instead, she chose to believe misinformation from President Donald Trump, who said on her show last week, ‘If you look at children, children are almost—and I would almost say definitely—but almost immune from this disease.' He added, ‘They don't have a problem. They just don't have a problem.' It was that specific false claim from the president that prompted Facebook to finally take down one of his campaign's posts, which featured the video clip from Fox. Twitter similarly blocked the Team Trump account from posting until they removed a tweet with that piece of misinformation.”
