No, I don’t want the View canceled and I don’t want anyone fired. I’m just pointing out that if the real concern was COVID misinformation in the media, a lot of people on the left would be jumping all over Sunny Hostin for what she said today. Instead, I’m guessing they’ll remain focused on canceling Joe Rogan.

The overall conversation was about the Democratic governors of four states who are now calling for an end to mask mandates. With Whoopi Goldberg still in the penalty box for her comments about the Holocaust, Joy Behar introduced the topic with a note of skepticism. “Why do it now? What is the point of this? Because they’re sick of it?”

Co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin who was sitting in as the guest conservative argued it was time to look at the big picture. “We’ve seen so many studies now that keeping [children] in masks is harming them detrimentally and putting them behind,” she said. She also pointed out that the states moving forward all have high vaccination rates.

Sunny Hostin initially agreed with what Griffin said about getting children vaccinated rather than relying on masks, but moments later a disagreement broke out between Hostin and Sara Haines. Haines pointed out that with Omicron the severity of the infection for young children was the equivalent of “a bad cold.”

“Do you want to take the chance for your kid to be the exception and your kid to be intubated,” Hostin interrupted.

“At this point, with what I know and again listening to people like Dr. Jha, I absolutely do,” Haines replied.

“Yeah, see I don’t want to take the chance with my kid. I don’t want my kid to be the one—part of the one percent that is intubated and dies because I don’t giver her a vaccine,” Hostin said. At this point, Joy Behar interrupted and the conversation went in a different direction. The problem of course is that suggesting one percent or even part of one percent of kids infected with COVID will die is extremely misleading as Fox News pointed out:

According to the CDC there have been 770 deaths from the coronavirus in children between the ages of 0 to 17 years, through the end of January. There have been nearly 10 million known cases of the coronavirus in the same age group, making the death rate approximately 0.008%, with countless cases unreported. Those COVID-19 deaths also make up less than 0.09% of the total number of deaths from COVID-19 in the United States, which just hit 900,000.

A study out of England last year put the death rate among children even lower when you separate those who died with COVID from those for whom infection with COVID was a factor in their deaths. In this excerpt, CYP stands for children and young people, i.e. those aged 0-17.

Between March 2020 and February 2021, 3,105 CYP in England died of all causes. Of these, 61 CYP had a positive SARS-CoV-2 test, and 3,044 died of all other causes.

Clinical records of the 61 CYP who died with a positive SARS-CoV-2 test were reviewed to identify if SARS-CoV-2 contributed to death. This process initially included identifying whether SARS-CoV-2 was listed as 1a (the direct cause of death) on the Certificate of Cause of Death and whether the clinical course described was typical of SARS-CoV-2 infection…

In total, 25 (41%) of the 61 CYP died of SARS-CoV-2, including 22 with acute COVID-19 and three with PIMS-TS…

An estimated 469,982 CYP were infected with SARS-CoV-2 in England from March 2020 to February 2021, giving an infection fatality rate of five per 100,000 CYP (0.005%) and, based on a population of 12,023,568, a mortality rate of two per million CYP (0.0002%).

That study involved infections with Alpha so it’s likely that the risk is even smaller with Omicron. And that study also found that several of the 25 deaths attributed to COVID had notable comorbidities which likely contributed to their deaths.

Is there still some risk to children? Yes, but 0.005% is a tiny fraction of one percent. As Vox pointed out last year, it’s a lower risk than many other things we take for granted, like driving.

The bottom line is that if The View was serious about battling COVID misinformation, it wouldn’t let Sunny Hostin vastly overinflate the risk of children dying. Her comments seems likely to lead other parents to fear for their kids despite the miniscule risk. If the concern is media misinformation, then progressives ought to be just as eager to call out Hostin as they were Rogan. But don’t hold your breath for that kind of response. Here’s the full exchange.