Fox News host declares “shock” that children get coronavirus: “I’ve heard kids really don’t get it”
Ainsley Earhardt tries to push Fox misinformation about COVID-19, only for emergency room physician to explain that it really is serious
Published
Citation From the August 10, 2020, edition of Fox News Fox & Friends
AINSLEY EARHARDT (CO-HOST): 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?
NATASHA KATHURIA (TEXAS EMERGENCY MEDICINE PHYSICIAN): 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: 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.