10/10/2021- 8:52 a.m.
The New York Times issued a correction on Friday after a reporter said 900,000 children in the US have been hospitalized with Covid-19, when the actual number is only a fraction of that: 63,000.
The mistake was made by the Times health and science reporter Apoorva Mandavilli, who took to Twitter in May to claim that the theory that coronavirus leaked from a lab in Wuhan has “racist roots.”
The article misrepresented the number of Covid hospitalizations among American children. From August 2020 to October 2021, it will be more than 63,000, not 900,000 since the start of the pandemic,” the correction read.
But this wasn’t the only flaw in the article entitled A New Vaccine Strategy for Children: Just One Dose, For Now. The piece also “incorrectly described actions taken by regulators in Sweden and Denmark.”
In addition, the article mistimed an FDA meeting to approve the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for children. It’s later this month, not next week,” the Liberal newspaper added.
New York Times science reporter Apoorva Mandavilli (pictured) missed the true number of children hospitalized for Covid in the US by 837,000 — a landslide difference — in an article she wrote Wednesday.
The mistakes in the piece, titled A New Vaccine Strategy for Children: Just One Dose, For Now, sparked outrage on Twitter
The incorrect number of children hospitalized in the US for Covid-19 was far from the only flaw in the article. The piece also misrepresented the actions of Sweden and Denmark and messed up the timing of an important FDA meeting
Twitter users weren’t too happy with the sloppy reporting, which fell short of the actual number of children hospitalized for Covid in the US at 837,000.
Responding to the correction, a fellow writer said, “I see this NYT reporter is up to her usual standards today.”
“Mandavilli has somehow inflated the number of American children hospitalized with the virus to 14 times the actual level,” another user tweeted.
Others suggested that Mandavilli – the winner of the 2019 Victor Cohn Prize for Excellence in Medical Science Reporting – is completely fabricating numbers, saying she is “delivering her own unique version of ‘focus on science’.”
“You have been called to report to the Hall of Shame. Fauci is waiting for you,” one Twitter user joked while another, more hostile response, asked why Mandavilli is still employed.
“She lied blatantly and not just a little bit, but by a huge margin. Covid fear spreading sensationally. She should get out!! Where is Cancel Culture when you really need it?’ read the tweet.
Mandavilli describes himself on the app as a Times reporter who mainly reports on the Covid-19 pandemic.
She sparked outrage earlier this year when she tweeted, “One day we’ll stop talking about the lab leak theory and maybe even admit its racist roots.” But alas, that day has not yet come.’
She deleted the tweet about an hour later, admitting it was “ill-phrased” — and that her own colleagues are investigating the theory.
Twitter users weren’t too happy about the accident and slammed Mandavilli, saying she “lived up to her usual standards” and “gave her own unique version of “focus on science.”
Among the critics who criticized Mandavilli’s alleged thongs was Texas Senator Ted Cruz, who replied in his own tweet on Thursday, “She’s just unwilling to investigate or report anything that could hurt her tender feelings.”
The Twitter face-off came after months of mainstream media – including the Times – rejecting the idea that Covid-19 could have been developed in a lab. Since then, they’ve been forced to admit the possibility amid mounting corroborating evidence.
In his tweet attacking Mandavilli, Cruz mentioned the irony that she describes herself as an “investigative reporter.”
Glenn Greenwald, co-founder of The Intercept, also targeted Mandavilli.
The NYT’s Covid reporter says we should stop talking about the lab leak theory — even if it’s how Covid got into humans — because that theory (as opposed to, I think, wet market theory ) is racist,” he wrote.
Mandavilli’s flip-flop on the matter mirrored that of the larger mainstream media, who originally rejected the idea that the virus originated in a lab studying bats, but are now publishing articles suggesting the theory could be plausible.
She controversially tweeted earlier this year that a theory about where Covid-19 began has “racist roots.” She deleted the tweet about an hour later, admitting it was “ill-phrased.” Her flip-flop mirrored that of the larger mainstream media, who originally rejected the idea that the virus originated in a lab studying bats, but are now publishing articles suggesting the theory may be plausible
Texas Senator Ted Cruz (pictured) criticized New York Times science reporter for dismissing Wuhan lab leak theory as “racist” on Twitter
Cruz took to Twitter to criticize Mandavilli for the tweet, saying she is “unwilling to investigate or report on anything that could hurt her tender feelings.”
Huanan’s wet market, where the first cluster of infections began, is just a few hundred meters from the Wuhan Centers for Disease Prevention and Control and just a few miles from the Wuhan Institute of Virology Lab, where scientists are reportedly conducting experiments with bats were performing before the pandemic started.
The lab is one of the few in the world approved to treat class 4 pathogens — dangerous viruses that pose a high risk of person-to-person transmission.
Three researchers at the institute sought medical attention in November 2019 before the virus began to spread, according to a recent report from the Wall Street Journal.
The paper said the report – which provides new details on the number of researchers affected, the timing of their illnesses and their hospital visits – may add to calls for a broader investigation into whether the Covid-19 virus is out of the lab. could have escaped.
But many reporters originally rejected the idea, relying on a World Health Organization (WHO) study in the early days of the pandemic, which stated it was “extremely unlikely” that the virus had escaped from a lab.
The report was written in part by Chinese scientists and was repeatedly delayed because China refused to give the WHO team raw data on the outbreak.
In the end, the WHO concluded in the report that the virus may have been imported on frozen meat.
