Recent media about Sonia Sotomayor

Let me start by saying that I have been planning on doing a post titled "The Media is failing us". 

There is a good chance that will take place next week, as a more general continuation of this entry. It may resonate more after this post.

The genesis of this much more specific post is that my sisters asked me about seeing that Sotomayor was being criticized. I don't hear about as much on my own, now that my job has become so consuming, but it was the weekend and I could do some research.

The criticism is for a remark on COVID, which is being criticized as being inaccurate.

Let me first state how hard it is to find the quote in any context. I suspect this is not a coincidence. This is what I could find:

"We have over 100,000 children, which we’ve never had before, in serious condition and many on ventilators.”

That sounds alarming, and is being widely decried as false, though critics are split on whether that is on account of her being incompetent or a liar. I think an appropriate context would be more information on where she got those figures, and what the actual figures are. I did dig around for numbers.

From https://www.aap.org/en/pages/2019-novel-coronavirus-covid-19-infections/children-and-covid-19-state-level-data-report/

"COVID-19 cases among US children have reached the highest case count ever reported since the start of the pandemic. For the week ending December 30th, over 325,000 child COVID-19 cases were reported. This number is a 64% increase over the 199,000 added cases reported the week ending December 23rd and an almost doubling of case counts from the two weeks prior."

The article goes on to say that children now make up about 17% of the infected. We have, in fact, not had that before.

I have been noticing the increase in child infection anecdotally. Many of the children are too young to receive the vaccine, and some children have not been eligible long enough to be fully vaccinated and boosted. That increases the odds of the cases being serious. 

The question then becomes what percentage of these cases are serious? If it is about a third, then Sotomayor is correct. 

That number is harder to assess. This headline, "Record Number of Kids With Coronavirus are Hospitalized", seems supportive, but doesn't actually give an aggregate total. It merely says averaging 750 cases per day.

https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2022-01-07/cdc-record-number-of-kids-with-coronavirus-are-hospitalized

Now, in a week where 350,000 child cases are reported, if only 5,250 are hospitalized, that is only about 1.6 % hospitalization rate, and certainly less than 100,000. However, people who were comfortable with the deaths of their grandparents and people of color may have a harder time justifying the deaths of children. At least, if they did, it would seem like some glimmer of reason one could hope for humanity, though the willingness to sacrifice grandparents and people of color does not show a lot of hope.

However, one can see the attempts to downplay these child hospitalizations as well, because they are mainly not for COVID, but involve COVID plus something else, as if that something else is completely unrelated to the COVID and not because of it.

For example, in one of the articles I saw something saying that most of the pediatric patients were there for diabetes, except as a throwaway it was also included that COVID seems to attack the pancreas. Was the diabetes there before? Even if yes, would it have required hospitalization?

Probably worth reading: https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news-other-healthcare/588857-covid-19-infections-in-children-may-increase

I should also refer to a recent pronouncement by CDC director Rochelle Walensky:

"The overwhelming number of deaths, over 75%, occurred in people who had at least 4 comorbidities. So really these are people who were unwell to begin with and yes, really encouraging news in the context of Omicron."

You might be surprised to find out how rapidly comorbidities accumulate, especially for the poor. 

One person with at least one comorbidity is Sonia Sotomayor, who developed Type 1 diabetes early in life. She was recently attending court sessions remotely due to that risk, especially given that the person seated next to her by order of appointment, Neil Gorsuch, has chosen not to wear a mask.

Those all seem like reasonable things to cover in a story about child COVID cases and Sonia Sotomayor, but of course, if the article focuses on the roasting, than it makes sense to quote Dinesh D'Souza, rather that track down case counts. Is it what is most important to know? I mean, it at least seems worth pointing out that many of those most critical of Sotomayor are also quite critical of masks and vaccines and treating the virus like an actual health threat, so there's that.

As long as the media -- regarding Sotomayor, yes, but certainly not exclusively -- is failing, let me point out two more things. 

Sonia Sotomayor is a well-spoken and outspoken force on the court. That has been demonstrated in multiple cases in just December. Even if all she is able to do in this current configuration is write a dissent that will contribute to future case law, that does make her a target of conservatives.

Probably related, there was recently a hot tip given to Politico about her dining with Democratic leadership while considering court cases they would be interested. That could certainly present ethical concerns. In fact, the woman dining with Senator Chuck Schumer was his wife, Iris Weinshall.

Iris Weinshall looks less like Sonia Sotomayor than John Lewis looked like Elijah Cummings. At some point, you have to question how hard they are trying... or perhaps the question is more what they are trying for.