Julia Hartley-Brewer, a British TV/Youtube talkshow host / interviewer, and a known conservative, claimed that a fellow show host (MSNBC/Al Jazeera TV)
Mehdi Hasan was not dealing with facts.
One does wonder what happened to JHB herself, as NOTHING she claimed is actually true. Let's examine the issues one at a time: a) children don't need COVID jabs, b) children don't need boosters, c) mask-wearing does not work.
Do Children Need COVID Vaccinations and Boosters? (a,b)
One of the frequent antivaxxer claims is "because Omicron doesn't show heavy symptoms in children, children don't need to be vaccinated against Omicron COVID."
A similar claim is "COVID is no worse than the flu when it comes to children."
Indeed, Daily Mail, a known gossip rag from the UK that occasionally covers real news, claimed that "no healthy child has died from COVID in the UK" as of September 2021. However, that's simply untrue, as
fact-checked by FullFacts.org. Daily Mail also claimed that only 300 or so children were hospitalized for COVID in UK and all but 20 have underlying health conditions, when in truth, the real numbers are over 23x larger... 7050 hospital admissions and 3181 with no underlying health conditions. And this is PRE-Omicron.
In the US the numbers are not that different.
According to CNN, citing CDC data, average of 672 children were admitted to hospital EVER DAY in the final week of January 2022. And this is with US starting offering vaccinations to ages 5+ in September 2021. Though it's clear that vaccinations do little to protect something against Omicron. One needs boosters, and those are not available to children yet. Indeed, that seems why CDC has refrained from recommending vaccinations to under 5 at this time.
According to CDC as of Mid January 2022,1045 children under 18 have died from COVID.
Flu kills maybe 5-6 children a year at most.
Clearly, COVID is much deadlier than the flu, due to its ease of spread, is putting more kids into hospitals despite "lighter" symptoms.
Evidence is clear: children need COVID vaccinations and boosters as soon as they can get them, but ones that work against Omicron.
Does Mask-Wearing Help in Reducing COVID? (c)
Logically, mask-wearing makes perfect sense. Don't breathe the COVID virus in, don't breath the COVID virus out if you're infected. But what does the science say? Is what JWB said true, there has been NO study that proves mask-wearing works in the real world?
There have been SEVERAL studies on this matter, actually. Some even involve kids.
"An Evidence Review of face masks against COVID-19" by Howard, Huang, Li, et. al
published by PNAS concludes "
Our review of the literature offers evidence in favor of widespread mask use as source control to reduce community transmission..."
The US CDC data shows that "people who reported always wearing a mask in indoor public settings were less likely to test positive for COVID than people who didn't", and N95/KN95 masks offer significantly lower odds compared to surgical masks or cloth masks.
And finally, "Association of Child Masking with COVID-19 Related Closures in US Childcare Programs"
Published on JAMA Network Open (Jan 2022) concludes: "This survey study of childcare professionals suggests that masking young children is associated with fewer childcare program closures, enabling in-person education. "
The evidence is clear... There were PLENTY studies showing the efficacy of masks, even on children, in the real world, such as childcare facilities.
Conclusion
Even minor Googling (tm) shows that it is JWB who is not dealing with facts, while JWB accused a fellow talk show host of not dealing with facts.
