I think traditionally people kind of considered, well, you know, kids aren’t going to get that sick with this. It [sic] more than 400 children have died of COVID-19. And right now we have almost 2,000 kids in the hospital, many of them in ICU, some of them under the age of four. So anybody who tries to tell you, well, don’t worry about the kids, the virus won’t really bother them, that’s not the evidence. And especially with delta being so contagious, kids are very seriously at risk. And it’s up to all of us to do everything we can to protect them, as well as we’re trying to protective everybody else at the same time.
This is Francis Collins, head of the National Institutes of Health, being interviewed by Chris Wallace of Fox News on Sunday, August 15.
400 children have died of COVID-19 in 1.5 years. Compare that to overall fatalities. As Don Boudreaux points out at CafeHayek, this is “a paltry 0.76 percent of the total number of children deaths in America (52,672) over the same time period.”
Chris Wallace did not follow up with any question, let alone a skeptical question. That’s more forgivable because we expect our news people to be innumerate. But it’s shocking for a leading health professional, for whom data should be his bread and butter, to stir fear where little is justified.
Look at this part of his bio from the NIH site:
Dr. Collins is an elected member of both the National Academy of Medicine and the National Academy of Sciences, was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in November 2007, and received the National Medal of Science in 2009. In 2020, he was elected as a Foreign Member of the Royal Society (UK) and was also named the 50th winner of the Templeton Prize, which celebrates scientific and spiritual curiosity.
That curiosity was certainly not on display in this interview.
The picture above is of Collins.
READER COMMENTS
Frank
Aug 17 2021 at 4:49pm
Harping on x deaths is of course pandering to those with limited information about any new risk, which is most of the human race. I’d let the panderers slide a tiny bit, a really really tiny bit, on account the new risk is mostly additive to the old risks. Thus, the Covid relevant message should be: If you want to maintain the level of risk your child faces while going to school unmasked, prevent him or her from running around outside. If your child is 16 or older, prevent him or her from driving. More risk, less fun! 🙂
AlexR
Aug 17 2021 at 5:42pm
I think “liar” fits Collins better than “innumerate.” The last sentence in the quote is the clue: Collins believes vaccinating children will slow the spread of the delta variant (among adults). By scaring parents into getting their children vaccinated, Collins hopes to achieve what he believes to be a better result overall.
It’s analogous to Fauci’s admitted lie early in the pandemic about mask wearing. He said he was worried that a surge in mask demand by the general public would deprive medical professionals of masks. He lied that he did not think wearing a mask would be effective, to tamp down demand.
So Fauci lied to depress demand, and Collins is lying to boost demand. In my view, being a liar is more reprehensible than being ignorant.
Rob Rawlings
Aug 17 2021 at 5:56pm
I do not have a problem with what Collins said. 400 child deaths (even if that is less than 1% of total child deaths) is not something that should be categorized as something we do not need to worry about. The number of deaths as a proportion of the total would of course be relevant in a cost/benefit analysis of what should be done to prevent these deaths but 400 child deaths attributed to a new cause should surely always be a cause for ‘worry’.
By way of comparison I did some googling to see what 400 deaths in 18 months compared to in terms of child deaths and it seems that at the start of the century this was about the number of children killed while front seat passengers. This number has come down dramatically (by well over 50%) since then seemingly because people have heeded advice that children 12 and younger ride in the rear seats of vehicles. Partially for this reason (combined presumably with other improvement in car safety) overall child fatalities in car crashes has also come down quite a bit.
(https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detail/children)
I think anyone who said in 2000 don’t worry about the 300 or so children a year dying as front seat passengers as that’s a tiny proportion of total child deaths would have been wrong given that a public safety campaign aimed at changing behavior appears to have saved a significant number of lives.
Philo
Aug 17 2021 at 6:34pm
You don’t mention the cost of saving lives. We can be concerned about loss of life, but we also should be concerned about everything else of value. In the case of child safety laws mandating car seats, it has been claimed that they have reduced the birth rate: parents have fewer children because the laws are burdensome. Some children’s lives are saved, but other potential children are never born (and the laws have other negative consequences); how does that net out?
Rob Rawlings
Aug 17 2021 at 7:10pm
@Philo: Yes, there will always be trade offs. Keeping schools closed for this past 18 months may well have saved lived but as what cost ?
My point however is that some degree of concern is appropriate to 400 deaths as it may well be the case that some level of prevention measures may have passed a cost/benefit test. Saying the number of deaths is ‘paltry’ and by implication should be of no concern is the other side of the coin to claiming that we must strive to eliminate all covid deaths no matter what the cost
Matt
Aug 17 2021 at 7:53pm
This is the data point du jour but even so I’m not aware of any economist claiming a *potential* life that wasn’t born (possibly) because of car seat laws is equivalent to a killed child; otherwise, anyone who wasn’t being as fruitful as physically able would be the same as a murderer.
So, OP is correct. Life is *extremely* valuable; it’s the one thing we can’t ever really make up. You could conceive of some effective way to catch children’s education up to expected levels after school shutdowns, but no matter how much money or effort you sink in, those 400 kids are not coming back to life.
Emily
Aug 17 2021 at 9:05pm
I don’t think a lot of people would claim those things are 1:1 equivalent. But, regarding the paper, ‘They estimate the laws lowered births by roughly 8,000 children in 2017 but prevented only 57 child car crash fatalities.” Are 140 potential lives equivalent to one killed child? That seems a lot less crazy. Surely there’s some number which would have you think, “hey, maybe that’s not worth it”?
Rob Rawlings
Aug 17 2021 at 9:40pm
@Emily: Assuming the study is close to real numbers then the 8000 couples who chose not to have children voluntarily when the safely law was introduced switched to something they preferred more. The 57 who lost a child very like suffered a devastating loss. So the 140-1 ratio does not sound crazy at all. And even in a world where there was no government to introduce such laws one can image those insurance companies or companies who own roads might have the incentive to enforce similar policies given that data.
Emily
Aug 18 2021 at 11:48am
Think about the edge case on this. If we make it so expensive to have children so that everyone ‘voluntarily’ decides not to, we prevent all child deaths. That’s bad, though, right? Because if that’s bad, then we’re just haggling about at which price the trade-off isn’t worth it.
Joel Pollen
Aug 18 2021 at 11:25am
If we can’t put a price on 400 children’s lives, then can we put a price on anyone’s life? And if we can’t do that, then how do we make any decisions at all?
Weighing the risk of death (or any other bad outcome) against the potential benefits of some activity is as unavoidable as breathing. Basically everything you do (or don’t do) has some impact on your risk of death. If you assign infinite weight to any downward modulation of your death risk, then how do you leave your house?
The NIH has a virtually unlimited menu of ways to convert money into extended life expectancy for some group of people. Since there is a finite amount of money at their disposal, they only way to make decisions about how to spend it is to choose those interventions that are likely to add the most years of life at the least cost. The NIH is in the cost/benefit analysis business. That’s what they do.
Even that aside, I think Francis Collins asserting that we have to do something because 400 children died of COVID-19 is indefensible. The very fact of his quantifying the number of deaths already puts us in cost/benefit analysis territory. If the value of a life is infinite, then he should just say “at least one child might die, so we have to do everything possible to prevent that.” And if you concede that the absolute number of child deaths is relevant, then it makes no sense to leave off the denominator of all-cause child mortality.
Rob Rawlings
Aug 18 2021 at 5:52pm
I just re-read the Collins quote and see he ends by saying ‘And it’s up to all of us to do everything we can to protect them, as well as we’re trying to [be] protective everybody else at the same time.’.
I agree that the deaths of those 400 children does not justify that unqualified ‘everything we can’ demand. Perhaps that is what David is objecting to ? I had taken him to be saying that he considered it innumerate even to claim that something responsible for only 0.76% of child deaths might be something we should be concerned about – and I would disagree with him on that.
Colin Fraizer
Aug 20 2021 at 4:41am
I think Emily has the better of this dispute. Would you claim that a rise in the required minimum wage that cost only potential jobs, but does not cause anyone to be fired had no drawbacks? Instead of looking at it from the point of view of “potential people who go unconceived”, you should consider that parents who wanted to conceive those children, but had to forego them because their “price” had been increased by these changes in the law—saving some lives, but at a significant cost to those who wanted children, but could not have them.
Evan Sherman
Aug 18 2021 at 10:40am
I agree that the useful question here is not the value of X child lives per se but rather the Y total costs incurred compared against saving the X lives. But I think this post and the subsequent conversation misses an obvious point: The costs of requiring car seats, however onerous, are dwarfed by the costs of (some of) the policies proposed to prevent child covid deaths – e.g. school lockdowns. (It’s not clear to me from the article which policies Collins considers proportionate to the need – or if he is even advocating for any policies at all.)
Much of the above thread argues the parameters of the cost/benefit of car seats to save kids from car accident deaths. As a parent of a young child, though, I can confidently say that the regulation requiring expensive car seats is much less burdensome than another year of distance learning would be if that is what lockdown advocates want. Not even remotely in the same ballpark.
Likewise, the reference to the flu vaccine appears to reflect a lack of proportional cost weighting. The costs of getting a flu vaccine are very low compared to what some lockdown advocates are calling for vis-a-vis school covid policy.
MarkW
Aug 18 2021 at 7:10am
I do not have a problem with what Collins said. 400 child deaths (even if that is less than 1% of total child deaths) is not something that should be categorized as something we do not need to worry about.
In the last flu season before Covid, there were 200 child deaths — has anybody ever proposed closing schools, keeping students six feet apart, requiring them to wear masks, etc based on a very similar (and very low) level of risk?
Rob Rawlings
Aug 18 2021 at 9:04am
The death of children from flu is something that we ‘worry’ about sufficiently to invest resources into flu vaccines for children!
robc
Aug 18 2021 at 9:32am
But no one talks of mandating it.
Well, probably some do, but they are soundly ignored.
JFA
Aug 18 2021 at 11:50am
The worry about the flu is enough to invest in a flu vaccine, yes. But even with the vaccine, ~450 kids per year (average since 2010) die of the flu. Sometimes it’s as high as 1100, sometimes around 150 (variation that is certainly mostly attributable to annual variants). The worry over Covid (which has similar death and hospitalization rates to annual flu for children) shut the school system down. There’s a disconnect between how we have historically responded to contagious respiratory viruses and how we are responding to Covid. Every single argument I’ve seen for shutting schools down for Covid or altering instruction in schools due to Covid applies equally to other common contagious respiratory viruses.
I am very concerned that even when a vaccine is given EUA for kids, people will still be pushing for masking in schools, some physical distancing, and quarantining.
Steve
Aug 17 2021 at 6:37pm
How many of those kids in the ICU are actually there because they have RSV, but also tested positive for COVID so they count as “COVID hospitalizations”? I heard there’s been an RSV outbreak down South.
Art Carden
Aug 17 2021 at 9:29pm
This table is illuminating:
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/2019/007-508.pdf
Ted Wiese
Aug 18 2021 at 9:21am
It would have been helpful to provide the population of each cohort in 1980 and 2018 to compare to the mortality data.
Daniel B
Aug 17 2021 at 11:02pm
Dr. Collins made such a basic mistake because of the incentives he faces. Let’s consider a scenario where Collins instead said “Yes, some kids have died of COVID-19, but the risk of children dying from coronavirus is low. Some kids can do just fine without wearing masks.”
What will happen is eventually a kid somewhere will die of COVID-19, and it will turn out that he attended a school with no mask mandate. Then the mother of that kid will get interviewed and will say with tears in her eyes and anger in her voice: “It’s because of people like Collins that my son died! I made sure my son wore his mask, but other kids didn’t mask and my son probably didn’t keep his mask on as much as he should have. His policy killed my son!”
Does anyone think that situation will make Collins look good? He’s gonna get crucified by social media, let alone the reporters who are gonna start challenging him because of people like this mother.
The political appearance for Collins is much better if he says “Better safe than sorry; have mask mandates for children” which is what he does in the interview. The costs and risks of that policy are more dispersed and harder to see – and because they’re out of sight, they’re out of mind.
I believe the best position for mask mandates in schools is: Let each school decide because nobody can possibly consider every school’s situation (Hayek’s knowledge problem). Sadly, there’s lots of conflict over this issue because (as David points out in his book on the UCLA School of economics; see the late Walter Williams also) of a lack of private property rights.
Evan Sherman
Aug 18 2021 at 1:33pm
Yes, this. Whenever a public health official comments on risks, always remember the logic conveyed in the above comment.
Gene
Aug 18 2021 at 5:08pm
The same incentives that drive high-profile people like Collins also drive the people who run local schools, don’t they? I’m all for pushing choice further down the hierarchy, but covering your arse is required at every level.
Daniel B
Aug 19 2021 at 4:35am
Thank you for bringing up the public school officials as I hadn’t considered that. Yes, while government school officials aren’t as high level as Collins, they face similar incentives to be overly cautious.
School choice plus school discretion in mask mandates equals more competing safety strategies (and more strategies in general). If school officials are being overly cautious – to the point where the benefits of safety exceed the costs – then schools that have a more optimal level of safety can compete away their customers and thus incentivize them to reexamine their policies.
Surely some or possibly even a great amount of students will not shun their current schools over mask mandates. But the existence of other schools without such mandates provides information to all of us – including school officials – about what works and what doesn’t – and the prospect of some people leaving will incentivize schools to do better. In case some of my readers are skeptical, this already happens all the time on a much larger level. The name for it is federalism; and let everyone note that moving states is harder than moving schools. (Pardon me for plagiarizing from the Hayek quote in the link.)
Alan Goldhammer
Aug 18 2021 at 10:49am
Posts such as this one are largely uninteresting to me as one who has followed the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak from the beginning. One can found large numbers of quotes from all sides of the political spectrum to pick on and to me it’s a fool’s errand. The critical issue all along has been how the American healthcare infrastructure will (or did, in the case of early waves) deal with the virus. Yes, vaccines were developed in record time and we have several therapeutics that appear to be of marginal utility, mainly against severe Covid if used promptly (we still do not have a good oral antiviral). While libertarians may object to vaccine mandates, had the US been more forceful we would not see hospitals again swamped with Covid patients. To be sure, the current mortality is lower than during the first wave, but in some areas of the country access to hospital based care is restricted because of this.
The issue with kids was never one of horrible risk but that they would be carriers coming home and infecting other family members. A mask mandate and improved classroom ventilation can help address this issue. Last night at dinner I asked my older daughter who is a special ed specialist in an elementary school whether the rooms have air purifiers. She would find out when she goes in for her first day this Thursday. Lots of simple things to do, but no will to do them.
Hospital ICU bed usage is a far better measure of Covid severity in the country as it provides real time information. Only when this drops to pre-pandemic levels can we have some hope that the worst is past.
JFA
Aug 18 2021 at 2:32pm
“The issue with kids was never one of horrible risk but that they would be carriers coming home and infecting other family members.”
This was only an issue prior to those family members having a vaccine and prior to the enormity of evidence that school (overall) is not a place of massive Covid spread. I will also point out that the narrative (in the opinion pages and *news* articles of many news outlets) went from “kids shouldn’t visit grandma because she would die” before the vaccine to “a vaccinated grandma could still infect her grandkids so best to stay home” after the vaccine was available (and you still see that kind of nonsense with the coverage of Provincetown).
“One can found large numbers of quotes from all sides of the political spectrum to pick on and to me it’s a fool’s errand.”
The innumeracy of people making decisions is a huge problem. Pointing it out may be a fool’s errand, but that doesn’t lessen the negative impact the above understanding of risk can have. One the reasons given for not opening my kid’s school until February was because (as per the superintendent), kids can get and spread Covid. The mere existence of risk was enough to shut a lot of places down. That is incredibly dangerous.
robc
Aug 18 2021 at 4:01pm
Can we talk about CON laws then, because they are at least partially (maybe wholly?) the cause of this.
Jon Murphy
Aug 18 2021 at 11:13am
I’d be more shocked if this wasn’t a common occurrence throughout the pandemic. I have a hypothesis that the main reason the public and policymakers are so misinformed about the nature, spread, and danger of the virus is precisely because the public health experts are innumerate.
David Seltzer
Aug 18 2021 at 1:14pm
Jon, basic Statistics 101. The difference between absolute frequency and relative frequency. If he doesn’t know the difference, he’s innumerate. IF he does and makes that statement, he is intellectually dishonest. Either way, why is the tax payer forced to pay for him?
Zeke5123
Aug 18 2021 at 11:43am
It is probably even worse than that. There was an analysis done looking at the young kids who died (think it was in the WSJ). Turns out almost every one of them had serious disease (eg cancer).
Since we record covid deaths as anyone who died during x days after testing positive for covid, it wouldn’t be surprising that covid had basically nothing to do with the 400 kids who died. That is, they died with covid not because of covid.
So that means the real risk of covid is likely even smaller to kids.
Rob Weir
Aug 18 2021 at 1:02pm
Though, I wonder if this is the perfectly rational attitude to have, given the institutional factors at play here?
History shows that after the Thalidomide-related birth defects in the 1950s, the FDA became far more cautious in drug approvals.
From their rational analysis, a life lost due to a drug they approved results in a hit, in prestige, power, and funding, to their institution. The life lost due to a delayed approval of a drug that might have been able to cure the disease — the causal connection here is less visible and can be safely disregarded, in terms of public opinion and the actions of budget-controlling politicians. Those deaths are dismissed as natural occurrences, tragic perhaps, but with no culpability to the FDA gatekeepers.
Similarly, with COVID, once public health authorities declare that they are now effectively in charge of the nation, they “own it.” COVID cases and deaths have led the evening news, the sole metric by which the media judges success or failure. If the CVOID numbers go up, they get more power and funding. (They “fail up.”) If the numbers go down, this raises their prestige and reaffirms the power and funding they were already given. (Higg’s ratchet-effect shows itself once again.)
Given the mechanisms at work, regarding prestige, power, and funding, it does not surprise me that public health authorities would play up the COVID numbers and ignore all other causes of death and all other impacts, economic, social, educational, etc., of their policies.
robc
Aug 18 2021 at 4:03pm
The Seen and the Unseen needs to be taught to every HS student.
Not by mandate, of course, but they should all be private schools.
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