Dr. Oz Doesn’t Want to Kill Millions of Kids – Just Thousands of People 

Looks like Dr. Oz mispspoke earlier this week. Now he is taking a lot of heat for suggesting that we should reopen schools. Here's what went down.

On Fox News Wednesday night Doc Oz said, quote, "I just saw a nice piece in 'The Lancet' arguing the opening of schools may only cost us 2 to 3 per cent in terms of total mortality . . . 

"Any life is a life lost, but to get every child back into a school where they're safely being educated, being fed and making the most out of their lives with a theoretical risk on the backside, that might be a tradeoff some folks would consider." 

That sounds REALLY grim.  Especially when you consider there are around 56 million kids in school . . . which means 1.7 million dead children is the, quote, "tradeoff" Dr. Oz potentially sees as worthwhile. 

That's how a lot of people interpreted his remarks . . . but it's NOT what he meant. 

What the article in "The Lancet" said was that school closings alone would only prevent 2 to 4% of the total deaths caused by the coronavirus. 

Recent government projections say we could see 100,000 to 240,000 deaths from COVID-19.  So let's go high-end and say it's 240K.  Four percent of that is "only" 9,600 deaths. 

So that's how many people you would theoretically risk by reopening schools.  And most of them would probably NOT be children . . . since young people are less likely to die from it. 

The deaths would predominantly be older people, or people with other health conditions, who caught the virus because more people are out there spreading it around.

Another point worth mentioning is that "The Lancet" itself doesn't even consider this a definitive study.  All they did was review other studies, many of which were not peer-reviewed.   

And a lot of them were not specific to COVID-19, but to outbreaks of the flu and SARS. 

So Dr. Oz was NOT calling for the deaths of nearly 2 million children.  But this study probably shouldn't be the basis of actual policy. 

And on top of that, even if we're talking "only" 10,000 . . . what if just ONE of them is your wife, your husband, a parent, a child, or even YOU?  How willing are you to risk it? 

(Slate)