It is amazing that someone like this can get a seat on the Supreme Court.
Liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor has been humiliated after she made wild claims earlier this year that was incredibly incorrect.
“We have over 100,000 children, which we’ve never had before, in serious condition, and many on ventilators” due to the coronavirus, Sotomayor said.
Here is Justice Sotomayor saying that “hospitals are almost all full capacity” and there are “over 100,000 children” hospitalized with covid “many on ventilators.
None of those things are true. Not even close. pic.twitter.com/MqWEL2UvJg
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) January 7, 2022
It was such a wild claim that even the “fact-checking” website, Politifact had to correct her.
Politifact reports:
Her claim is not supported by data.
In all, 82,842 COVID-positive children 17 and younger have been admitted to the hospital since Aug. 1, 2020, according to CDC data.
The most recent data available as of Sotomayor’s remark showed 3,342 children were currently hospitalized for confirmed COVID-19, according to federal data. That number rises to 4,652 children if suspected coronavirus cases are included.
Both figures represent less than 5% of the number Sotomayor cited.
At the time when Soytmayor made the claim many of the children cited in the report were not admitted because of the virus and only tested positive once they were admitted.
More from Politifact:
At the time she made this comment, federal data showed that fewer than 5,000 coronavirus-positive children were in the hospital. In fact, fewer than 83,000 children have been hospitalized for COVID-19 — cumulatively — since August 2020.
Matter of fact, just a few weeks later the CDC reduced its estimation of pediatric deaths due to the coronavirus by 24%. The CDC reported that children accounted for 0.26% of all coronavirus deaths and even that number isn’t final because the department is estimating; they don’t have a hard number.
The claim made by the Supreme Court Justice was so far out there that even Biden’s CDC director was forced to correct her.
SOTOMAYOR: “Over 100,000 children” are hospitalized due to COVID, with “many on ventilators”
BRET BAIER: “The number’s not 100,000. It’s roughly 3,500 in hospitals now?”
WALENSKY: “Yes.”
How did Sotomayor make it on the Supreme Court?pic.twitter.com/ANapx1MbCq
— Benny (@bennyjohnson) January 9, 2022