I don't know whether Fox host Ainsley Earhardt really had no idea that children are contracting and dying from coronavirus or if she was showing her loyalty to Donald Trump but she claimed to be shocked to learn that 97,000 kids have tested positive for COVID-19 because “I had heard kids really don't get it.”
“Tough journalist” Earhardt asked Texas emergency medicine physician Natasha Kathuria, “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?”
In fact, the 97,000 cases were just two weeks worth of cases, as Kathuria emphasized to either a spectacularly ignorant Earhardt or a spectacularly dishonest one.
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.
Earhardt nevertheless continued pushing her Trumpy misinformation that kids are “almost immune.”
EARHARDT: Yeah, right, we're just going to have to be extremely careful, because we all — most of Americans want the kids back in school, but we want to do it safely. But it is true, though, that when the kids get it, they don't have the — you said, it's just minimal side effects, right? If they even see those at all?
KATHURIA: Well, so that's the majority of them. So, the likelihood of death and the likelihood of critical illness is lower, but it's possible. I mean, a seven-year-old just died in Georgia, with no medical problems. We hear about this, and we see it all the time. Kids get sick, they get multisystem inflammatory syndrome from this. They can get ill from this, the likelihood is just lower. So they're not immune to this, they definitely can fall ill. But the risk obviously is lower than, you know, a parent or a grandparent whose risk is exponentially greater.
We'll be watching to see if Earhardt challenges anyone who pushes the “kids are almost immune” myth in front of her in the future.
Meanwhile, watch Earhardt claim to discover that kids are at risk five months into the pandemic, below, from the August 10, 2020 Fox & Friends, via Media Matters.
Ainsley Earhardt is a prime example of the modern malady that is addiction to ‘fame’. It seems that for many people, the need to be seen and heard outweighs any consideration of ethics, morals and self respect.